Edition 48 |May 2022

Welcome to the May 2022 Office of Suicide Prevention newsletter!

Office of Suicide Prevention Commission

This month’s Rockstar Partners are the amazing Suicide Prevention Commission Commissioners! These Commissioners serve as the Advisory Body for the Office of Suicide Prevention. Commission meetings are held quarterly. Commissioners prioritize equity and learn from leading experts around the country on the intersections of lived experience with data-driven practices to set statewide priorities and recommendations. Commissioners also serve on and lead Commission workgroups to work closely and collaboratively with Coloradoans in meeting various needs. Thank you, Commissioners, for all your service! We are so grateful for all that you do. 

Do you have a Rockstar Partner in your community that you would like to see featured in our next newsletter? Nominate them here by completing our Rockstar Partner Nomination Form.

The Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention (OSP) is hiring for a Youth Suicide Prevention Temp Aide. This position supports youth suicide prevention efforts for the OSP, including contract monitoring, serving as a point of contact for grantees, tracking grantee program needs and deliverables, and supporting and aligning youth suicide prevention work, and workgroups, and improving youth-specific resources. Please see the job posting for more information and to apply: Youth Suicide Prevention - Temp Aide. Application deadline: May 20, 2022.     

The Office of Suicide Prevention, in conjunction with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, is hosting two Sources of Strength Train-the-Trainer events this summer! A Mesa County in-person event June 27-30, 2022 and a virtual event August 1-4, 2022. The OSP will be covering registration costs for these events. For priority consideration, please apply here by: May 25th, 2022

State Partners

Office of Behavioral Health Tribal Liaison Shelly Solopow Named to American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) Writing Group: Huge congratulations to OBH Tribal Liaison and Cultural Competence Advisory Council Co-Chair Shelly Solopow, LPC, CACII, for her formal selection as a member of the Culturally Competent/Trauma-Informed/Social Determinants of Health writing group for the 4th Edition of the ASAM Criteria. This appointment will last one year and the invitation was extended by Dr. Corey Waller, Editor-in-Chief.

Commission

The Commission held its most recent Quarterly Commission Meeting on April 29th, 2022. A big thank you to our presenters: OSP’s own Conlin Bass who presented on Zero Suicide in Colorado; Lukas Soto who presented on Using Self-Empowerment as a Protective Factor for Healing; and Kelly Bowman for providing us with an overview on 988! Thank you, too, to the interpretation team for interpreting the Commission meeting into Spanish!

The Suicide Prevention Commission supports multiple workgroups: an Older Adults Workgroup; a Youth-Specific Initiatives Workgroup; the Governor’s Challenge Workgroup to Support Service Members, Veterans, and their Families; and a Postvention Workgroup. Click here to sign up for any of the workgroups. All workgroup materials can be found here.

Every month we hold an interactive online Learning Collaborative for health system leaders working in suicide prevention. Experts in health care-based suicide prevention, advocates who speak on their lived experience, and a diverse array of other guest speakers join health system leaders from across Colorado in discussing state of the art approaches to improving care and saving lives. The next collaborative will take place virtually on Thursday, May 26th, 2022 from 10-11 am MT. To be contacted for the next collaborative, please email the OSP Zero Suicide Coordinator, Conlin at: Conlin.Bass@state.co.us.

Training

Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS)

The OSP is pleased to announce that we will be hosting our next free, virtual CAMS trainings for Colorado providers on Tuesday, June 7, 2022 and Thursday June 30, 2022. Please feel free to apply yourself, or share the below application links with your partners. 

 (select ONLY ONE of the below dates)

1. Tuesday June 7, 2022

Deadline: Monday, May 23rd, 2022

2.  Thursday, June 30, 2022 

Deadline: Friday, June 17, 2022

*Please note that space is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Submitting an application does not guarantee your space. OSP staff will reach out to applicants to confirm registration. 

Please visit the Office of Suicide Prevention’s Training webpage for more information on CAMS, LivingWorks Start, and much more!

Please note: There is an "Upcoming Events" section at the end of the newsletter. If your browser clips this email, please be sure to click "View entire message" to access all of the content!

General

Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado (SPCC) has released their 2022 Mini Grants Applications, now open through June 15, 2022. Learn more, here. See their Mini Grant Rubric here. Download their grant application, here. 

Supporting Colorado's Behavioral Health Recovery Act Through the Regional Health Connector Program: Read more about the Regional Health Connector Program which received funding through the Behavioral Health Recovery Act (BHRA), to improve behavioral and mental healthcare systems across the state. 

Clinician-Survivors: The Peril and Promise of Risking to Care, when a clinician loses someone to suicide, David Jobes’ April 11 blog post.

404 ERROR: Mistakes We Need to Stop Making in Suicidology, a free one-hour recorded webinar with David Klonsky, Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Equity

Study shows gender-affirming care improves mental health

Racial Differences in Suicide Risk among Adults in Criminal-Legal Systems

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

Check out MHTTC’s AAPI webpage for a variety of resources for AAPI Heritage month. 

Learn more about the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association (NAAPIMHA) whose goal is to promote the mental health and well being of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities.

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): Discusses AAPI barriers to mental health care and resources.

Youth and Young Adults

CDC’s first national survey of high school students, a project funded by the federal CARES Act to assess the mental health of American youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, released this overview report of the ABES MMWR Supplement which describes the ABES methodology, including the student questionnaire and administration, sampling, data collection, weighting, and analysis.

Understanding and Addressing Mental Health Needs of Transgender, Non-Binary, and Gender Expansive Youth in Schools

Role of thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness and psychological distress in the association between adverse childhood experiences and suicidal ideation in college students.

Older Adults

May is Older Americans Month! The following resources are now available to help you celebrate OAM in your community: 2022 logos, poster, templates, social media graphics, and activity ideas.

Please also check out the “Upcoming Events” section below!

SAMHSA has a number of resources and products for serving older adults with mental and substance use disorders that can be useful to clinicians, other service providers, older adults, and caregivers.

Please see the SPRC’s Older Adult Suicide Prevention webpage for resources, factsheets, toolkits and more for older adults. 

Climate Change and Older Adults: Planning Ahead to Protect Your Health

Veterans

Women Veterans' Perspectives on Suicide Prevention in Reproductive Health Care Settings: An Acceptable, Desired, Unmet Opportunity. A recent publication in the National Library of Medicine, Women's Health Issues, suggesting that VA RHC settings may present a viable milieu for implementing upstream, gender-sensitive, veteran-centric suicide prevention strategies.

Lethal Means Safety

HHS’s New Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Benefit Resources Will Help People Seeking Care to Better Understand Their Rights. In partnership with the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has developed new, free informational resources that inform Americans of their rights under law on coverage for mental health benefits.

Voluntary, temporary, out-of-home firearm storage: A qualitative study of stakeholder views. Firearm retailers and law enforcement show support for providing safe storage options. Experts in academics take the next step to studying the feasibility of expanding out-of-home firearm storage options. 

The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence solutions released a summary of the 2020 gun deaths in the United States.

Cross-Pollinated Resources

Child Abuse Prevention is Suicide Prevention: Providing families with the supports they need now can help protect children from maltreatment and lessen the impact of the pandemic on their mental health and suicide risk.

Big Ideas in Overdose Prevention: Reach People Where They’re At. Tuesday, May 24, 2022

12:00 pm to 1:00 PM MT

Serving Hispanic and Latino Older Adults and Caregivers: Creative Approaches for Social Engagement and Connection. Webinar on May 31, 2022 from 11:00-12:00 pm MT focused on social engagement among Hispanic and Latino older adults and caregivers.

How Can Technology Improve How we Predict and Prevent Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior? Wednesday, June 1, 2022 at 1 pm MT

Shared Risk and Protective Factors Conference. June 1st - 3rd, 2022. Keystone Conference Center. Frisco, CO

2022 Virtual IHE Summer Safety Symposium Thursday June 2, 2022, 8:00 am - 3:45 pm MT. This FREE virtual symposium brings together campus safety professionals; including administrators, mental health staff, law enforcement, security, emergency management, prevention and advocacy specialists, Title IX Coordinators, facilities, and IT professionals responsible for protecting campuses. This symposium was initially designed for staff of Institutions of Higher Education (IHE), but faculty from K-12 schools and districts will also benefit, as the topics are directly relevant to their work.