Inpatient Post Admission Cognitive Therapy (PACT) for the Prevention of Suicide Attempts: A Pilot Study

Suicide remains a serious public health problem as the 4th leading cause of death among individuals 15-44 years old and the 2nd leading cause of death in the military. Developing effective interventions for suicide behavior has been a stated goal of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. To date, only a limited number of controlled studies have examined the efficacy of psychosocial interventions in reducing suicide behavior. Preliminary findings from the University of Pennsylvania (Brown et al., 2005) indicate that outpatient cognitive therapy reduces the likelihood of repeat suicide attempts by approximately 50%. Yet the efficacy of this promising new intervention has not been tested in other medical settings or in other specific at risk groups.

We propose an adaptation of Beck and colleagues cognitive therapy suicide protocol for implementation, feasibility, and pilot testing at an inpatient psychiatry setting for specific delivery to military service members and their family members with a recent suicide attempt. Suicide attempt behavior is one of the most powerful risk factors for repeat suicide behavior as well as eventual death by suicide. Delivering a brief and possibly potent psychotherapeutic intervention during a patient's inpatient hospitalization aims to directly target individuals at high risk for future suicide behavior, i.e., young adult, mostly males with a recent suicide attempt, under direct stress of a military career. We expect that the adapted intervention, titled Post Admission Cognitive Therapy (PACT), will show promise in reducing the likelihood of post-hospitalization suicide attempt behavior as well as psychological risk factors associated with suicide such as depression, hopelessness, suicide ideation, and posttraumatic symptoms. Our proposed design is a randomized controlled pilot trial with blinded outcome assessments.

Specific Aims: (1) To develop and evaluate a new manual of Post-Admission Cognitive Therapy (PACT) as a targeted inpatient treatment for individuals admitted for a recent suicide attempt to a military hospital. (2) To assess the feasibility of the study's assessment procedures by monitoring the completion rate of outcome measures during face-to-face as well as follow-up phone and web-based administrations. (3) To evaluate the degree of change and variability of response to Post-Admission Cognitive Therapy in comparison to Enhanced Usual Care at post-intervention and follow-up (1-, 2-, and 3-Month) on subsequent suicide attempt behavior (primary outcome) as well as on levels of depression, hopelessness, and suicide ideation (secondary outcomes). (4) To examine in a preliminary manner whether improvements on primary and secondary outcome measures are associated with enhanced problem solving abilities which is viewed as a potential mechanism of change in cognitive therapy for the reduction of suicide behavior.

Study Design: We plan to randomize 24 patients hospitalized at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a recent suicide attempt to one of two conditions: (1) Post-Admission Cognitive Therapy + Enhanced Usual Care (PACT+EUC) or (2) Enhanced Usual Care (EUC). Individuals who are over the age of 18, able to communicate in English and willing to provide informed consent will be recruited. The PACT+EUC condition will consist of six 60-90 minute individual cognitive therapy sessions administered preferably over 3 days. The EUC condition will consist of the usual care patients receive at an inpatient facility during their hospitalization in addition to assessment services provided by independent evaluators who work directly with our research team. The primary outcome variable is the number of subsequent suicide attempts. We expect that patients in the control condition will reattempt suicide at an earlier date and at a higher frequency as compared to patients enrolled in the intervention condition. Secondary outcome measures include the severity of depression, hopelessness, and suicide ideation. Patients in both conditions will be assessed on the dependent measures at baseline and at 1-, 2-, and 3- month follow-up intervals. Data analyses will provide estimates of the statistical power of PACT relative to EUC over time via the usage of repeated observation data. Our preliminary effect size estimates will be used for future sample size calculations to conduct a larger randomized controlled trial to definitively determine the efficacy of PACT.