Psychiatric Emergency Services Family Support and Follow-Up Program

All participants complete a battery of measures in the waiting room during their PES visit. Youth will complete surveys that collect demographic information, assess current suicidal ideation, perceptions of future suicidal risk, connectedness to others, reasons for living, depression, alcohol use, and self-efficacy. Parents will complete questionnaires that gather demographic information, self-efficacy, baseline means restriction, expectations, hopes, and needs during their visit to PES, assess their child's adaptive functioning and behavioral, social, and emotional adjustment, parent psychiatric history, parental distress, and attitudes about the extent to which seeking mental health treatment is stigmatized. PES clinicians will also administer the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale as part of standard PES practices.

The first phase of intervention (Phase I) involves training clinical staff at PES to implement a new model of service delivery that focuses on the PES visit as an opportunity for crisis intervention for youth and families. The training incorporates best practices in brief crisis-focused interventions in emergency settings. When the provider training is completed, families will receive enhanced usual care by clinical staff along with a toolkit that reinforces evidence-based practices for crisis management such as safety planning, supervision, and monitoring of their at-risk youth. Parents and youth are asked to complete the battery of baseline measures at PES, then an online follow-up survey at 3 days (parents only) and 2 weeks (parents and youth) post discharge. Youth and parents are asked to report on the extent to which they recall their clinician promoting best practice interventions such as safety planning and means restriction during their visit and whether or not they felt their needs were met in PES. Families will also report on barriers accessing outpatient care and need for additional supports. Parents will be asked to report on any means restriction and safety planning activities with their child and whether their child was connected to outpatient services. Youth will be asked to report on the extent to which they feel supported by their families in addition to information about their level of suicide risk.

The second intervention (Phase II) includes the interventions provided during phase I (i.e., enhanced care and toolkit) and caring follow-up contacts for parent participants. Caring contacts post discharge may occur by phone, text, or email. This study will examine the benefit of text messaging contacts in addition to phone contacts in the days and weeks post discharge.

Data from Phase I will be compared to pre-test data obtained at baseline to assess the potential benefits of enhancements to usual care as measured by families' increased abilities to implement safety measures (means restriction, safety plans, risk assessment), support (expressions of caring, modification of expectations), or link their child to outpatient psychiatric treatment. Secondary analyses will explore possible mechanisms of action for family behavior changes (or lack thereof), including levels of parent distress at baseline, parents' stigma regarding receiving psychological services, and markers of the severity of youth psychopathology (i.e., level of suicidality, depression, substance use, functional impairment, and low parental connectedness). Parent ratings of self-efficacy are hypothesized to change with the addition of the interventions during Phase I and Phase II.