YSPP receives generous grant for suicide prevention among high-risk groups

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) has been awarded a 3-year $1.2 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).  The focus of the 3-year project is to reduce youth suicides among several high-risk groups: Native American youth, youth in foster care and college students. The project has five major goals:

• To implement evidence-based suicide prevention practices;
• To raise awareness of suicide, its associated risks and resources for help;
• To increase the individual skills of caregivers to respond to suicidal youth;
• To increase a community's capacity to respond to suicidal youth; and
• To strengthen cross-system collaboration at local and statewide levels that result in stronger suicide prevention practices across the state.

YSPP will be working under contract with DOH to provide on-going technical assistance and consultation to the project partners.  These include the Colville Nation, Tulalip Tribes, Community Youth Services (Thurston County) and a consortium of four colleges and universities in Pierce County (University of Puget Sound), Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma Community College and the Tacoma branch of the University of Washington).  YSPP will also participate in a significant evaluation of this project to help gauge the progress of meeting the goals and to help inform the suicide prevention field of promising and effective programs for further implementation.

YSPP is very pleased to be a part of this partnership.  We embrace the grant's tenet of collaboration:  "DOH, YSPP and the seven target communities together at "the table" working through each aspect of the project:  planning, implementation and evaluation."  Periodic progress reports will be posted on this site.