A Pilot Study of a Smartphone-based Intervention for Suicidal Inpatients

Suicide is the most common form of deadly violence. Indeed, since more than 40,000 people die by suicide each year, people are 2.5 times more likely to die by their own hand than someone else's. The four weeks after discharge from inpatient care is an especially dangerous period in terms of suicide risk, possibly because of poor post-discharge treatment adherence and poor treatment efficacy during a suicide crisis. To reduce suicide risk both in general and during the post-discharge period, interventions are needed that (1) are easily adhered to and (2) are effective during a suicide crisis. The goal of the study is to pilot-test a suite of five smartphone-based ecological momentary interventions (EMI) that can be easily used during a suicide crisis. Two target hopelessness, two target loneliness, and one targets negative automatic thoughts associated with hopelessness and loneliness. Although these interventions are new to the study of suicide, they are all grounded in decades of empirical work and adapted from effective interventions in areas relating to suicide.

Participants will be 20 inpatients (n = 10 each in treatment as usual [TAU] plus intervention and TAU plus assessment [i.e., control] groups) from the Massachusetts General Hospital Inpatient Psychiatric Service. The investigators hypothesize that those in the TAU plus intervention group will have lower levels of suicidal ideation during the inpatient and post-discharge period than those in the TAU plus assessment group.