An Adaptive Intervention for Adolescents at Risk for Suicide: A Pilot SMART

"The MI-enhanced safety plan intervention component is delivered during hospitalization and includes an individual and family meetings. The goal of the individual meeting with the adolescent is to develop an individualized safety plan for use during a suicidal crisis. This best practices approach of safety planning is augmented with Motivational Interviewing (MI) as a core strategy to explicitly elicit adolescents' motivation and commitment to behavior change (i.e. use safety plan; adaptive coping), address barriers or ambivalence, and strengthen self-efficacy. The focus of the family meeting, which is similarly guided by MI, is to prepare parents/guardians, with input from the adolescent, for how they may support the adolescent in implementing the individualized safety plan after discharge and on strengthening parents' commitment and self-efficacy."

For participants randomized to receive text boosters, booster text messages will be sent daily for 4 weeks. The messages will be tailored to encourage use of individualized coping strategies identified as part of safety planning at hospitalization and will include additional adaptive coping tools and resources. The text message content and tone will be consistent with principles of MI.

The focus of the post-discharge booster phone call with adolescent and with parent, each conducted separately, will be to to further adjust the safety plan to better meet post-discharge needs, to further enhance adolescents' motivation and commitment to use coping strategies, and to further support adolescents' and parents' self-efficacy to manage suicidal crises.