AFSP is actually the first place that
funded me to be an independent
researcher. So it was a big challenge to
figure out where to get the money to do
the work that we're doing and we went to AFSP pilot grant about ten or eleven years ago to
think about how do we standardize the
way that pediatricians ask questions
about suicide risk in primary care. That
really sort of launched a certain
trajectory for me in my career path. So that study actually focused on what do we do if
standardize the questions that are asked.
So I had a expert panel of consultants
that worked with me. We developed four
very brief questions and inserted them
into a standard psycho-social screening
at a primary care practice and then rolled
that out into three other practices and
what we found was, listen, if we ask the
questions a couple things happen. One is
providers are more likely to do it if
it's in front of them and kids are more
likely to endorse if their having suicidal
thoughts. One of the great  outcomes
from that study though was that
pediatricians were calling me on the phone and saying "I'm so glad you did this because
I never would've been concerned about
this kid or that kid and had we not asked
those questions we may never have gotten them help." We spend a lot of time and effort
developing great interventions that we
can do for individuals when they're
suicidal. The problem, though, is that we
don't see most of the people that are
suicidal. They do show up in primary
care, that show up in the emergency
department, kids go to schools, and so we need to do some effort in those areas to
help identify the kids who could be at
risk and how do we get them into the
interventions that we know are working
as well.
