Developing an Intervention to Promote Lethal Means Safety in Suicidal Adolescents

Study Objective: to develop a phone-based intervention to aid parents of suicidal adolescents to adhere to lethal means safety. Lethal means counseling is the practice of educating patients and their families about limiting access to items that can be used to attempt suicide. Though lethal means counseling is standard practice in treating suicidal patients, there is little experimental literature related to its utilization across different providers and its efficacy. Further, there is a significant gap in the literature on lethal means counseling as it relates to adolescents. The proposed project will investigate a novel text message-based intervention aimed to promote lethal means safety.