Maine Youth Suicide Prevention Program (MYSPP)

 

The program provides suicide prevention training and education programs to educators, public safety personnel, clinicians, clergy, health care providers, and others who are in close contact with youth; data and educational resources; and suicide prevention/crisis intervention guidelines for school administrators.

 

Program accomplishments for 2002 include:

New in 2002:

·      Guidelines for school administrators were developed with the Maine    Attorney General’s Office, the Maine School Management Association, the Maine Principal’s Association and countless school personnel.  These Guidelines are intended to assist administrators to more effectively identify and assist suicidal students and ensure that staff are appropriately educated and informed as to these procedures and their individual roles;

·      EMS Run Report Data were analyzed and showed that 47% of ambulance runs for a “concern of suicide” were in response to youth ages 24 and under. This is significant since only 31% of the overall population is in this age group.

·      The Region 1 Project involving adolescent boys in focus groups to discuss how to improve their access to services was begun, but has not been completed as yet.

·      A successful intervention led by three eighth grade boys in one middle school following their participation in the Lifelines class was reported to the MYSPP. A short video, “A Life Saved”, telling this powerful intervention story was produced by the program for use in future training sessions with adults and youth.

·      The biggest program news for the year was obtaining a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to implement and evaluate a comprehensive school-based youth suicide prevention project. The grant began in October 2002 and continues through September of 2005. Twelve Maine High Schools will be selected to participate in the project.

 

Other MYSPP Accomplishments:

·      259 new Adult Gatekeepers trained in schools and community agencies statewide making the total trained by the program 2,080;

·      School Health Education Teachers in Middle and High Schools around the state implemented the Lifelines curriculum with their 8^th and 9^th grade students in the pilot year of this curriculum in Maine;

·      48 were trained to conduct awareness sessions in their communities, making the total trained to conduct 1 ­ 2 hour educational sessions 245.

·      834 adults and 22 youth received suicide prevention awareness education during the year, for a total of 3,751 adults and 284 youth since program inception;

·      222 DBDS Crisis Clinicians have participated in annual conference;

·      23 DHS clinicians trained;

·      Three new school systems, for a total of fifteen schools, have staff trained to implement the Reconnecting Youth curriculum for at-risk students;

·      The Program web site experienced 14,145 visits, about 1,000 per month;

·      Print materials distribution included: 20,000 printed information booklets; 10,000 program brochures distributed statewide annually; Teen produced posters and book covers and Teen Yellow Pages were distributed statewide;

 

Notes about Continuing Challenges:

·      The guiding principle of the MYSPP is to Do No Harm. This means that suicide prevention work must be done carefully and in a systematic way. However, many calls for assistance come either in the midst of a crisis or are requests to work only with youth. It’s a continuing struggle to work towards proactively building safe and caring school climates where adults are trained to recognize and assist at-risk youth, suicide prevention protocols are in place and linkages are made with community crisis services.

·      Staff resources for the analysis of suicide attempt and death data continues to be a problem. During 2002, we were able to hire a summer intern from a graduate school of Public Health and he was employed in the analysis of EMS data. Also, through the new CDC grant, we acquired the assistance of an Epidemiologist beginning in 10/02. This should help guide our data analysis for program evaluation and learning more about suicidal behavior among Maine youth.