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VA Stars and stripes Network
Educational Activities:
Suicide Risk Identification and Prevention in Primary Care and Behavioral Healthcare Settings
(9/26/00, Pittsburgh; 9/29/00, Philadelphia)
In the fall of 2000, our MIRECC held its first large-scale educational conference entitled “Suicide Risk Identification and Prevention in Primary Care and Behavioral Healthcare Settings.” The important topic of suicide prevention was selected in consultation with the VISN 4 Behavioral Healthcare Council, one of our partners in presenting the program. We invited behavioral health, primary care, and geriatric care providers from throughout VISN 4 and conducted the conference at both
VISN hub sites: September 26, 2000 in Pittsburgh and September 29, 2000 in Philadelphia. We also were pleased to welcome staff from VISN 10, who joined us for the full-day event. In total, the conference drew 175 attendees in Pittsburgh and 224 attendees in Philadelphia. The conference became a national and regional focal point for professionals interested in suicide prevention. Our speakers, including Victoria Arango, Ph.D., and John Mann, M.D., of Columbia University, and Eve Moscicki, Sc.D., MPH, from the National Institute of Mental Health, are national leaders in this important area. The major addresses discussed detailed information about the assessment and management of suicide risk, and then breakout sessions gave attendees an opportunity to discuss issues specific to their care setting. Both conference days were extremely well received; participants expressed their interest in attending smaller scale, follow-up events and offered their suggestions for specific topics.
Feedback from participants at our fall conference revealed the following areas of interest for further training:
1. Use of a brief suicide risk assessment tool;
2. Practical issues in assessing and treating risk factors for suicide, such as depression;
3. Impact of suicide attempts and completions on staff and families;
4. Ethical and legal issues, including those related to malingering;
5. System-level issues, such as the availability of an emergency service team for triaging and phone consultation, referral protocols, and access to computer information.
To respond to these interests, we offered two follow-up workshops at the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia medical centers, one tailored to geriatrics (3/19/01 and 3/27/01), the other to behavioral health and primary care (8/14/01 and 8/ /01). These half-day workshops provided an interactive, clinically-focused forum in which to address the identified issues as they apply within each clinical setting. The two workshops
then were integrated into a single workshop, which
was offered at the remaining eight medical centers throughout the VISN.
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