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QUERI Research Targets Suicide Prevention

Takeaway: QUERI – a pioneer in implementation science – conducts innovative and expanding research on suicide prevention, including implementing “Caring Contacts for Suicide Prevention” in emergency departments as well as with Veteran Crisis Line callers, and implementing and evaluating suicide risk among Veterans screened for depression and PTSD.

September brings with it both National Suicide Prevention Week (9/6-9/12) and World Suicide Prevention Day (9/10). Suicide is a national public health concern that affects all Americans, particularly Veterans. According to the 2019 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Report by VA’s Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention:

• The number of Veteran suicides exceeded 6,000 each year from 2008 to 2017.
• Among U.S. adults, the average number of suicides per day rose from 86.6 in 2005 to 124.4 in 2017. In that same year, the suicide rate for Veterans was 1.5 times the rate for non-Veteran adults, after adjusting for population differences in age and sex.

A recent study in The Lancet shows that the strongest predictors of death by suicide, either during service or post-separation, include current and past diagnoses of self-inflicted injuries, major depression, bipolar disorder, substance use disorder, and other mental health conditions (compared with service members with no history of diagnoses).

VA continues to seek and champion evidence-based clinical interventions and community prevention strategies to help reduce the rate of suicide among our nation’s Veterans. For example, in a collaborative effort of the Office of Enterprise Integration (OEI), the VHA Innovation Ecosystem, the Office of Research and Development (ORD), and the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, Dr. Carolyn Clancy, Dr. David Carroll, and Mr. Kshemendra Paul held a virtual Data Summit for Suicide Prevention (Summit) on August 19 and August 26, 2020. The goal of the Summit was to understand how VA can collectively remove barriers and improve data policy, information sharing processes, and analytic tradecraft and collaboration regarding suicide prevention.

As part of VA’s overall efforts to improve suicide prevention, VA/HSR&D’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) – a pioneer in implementation science – conducts innovative and expanding research on suicide prevention, including implementing “Caring Contacts for Suicide Prevention” in emergency departments as well as with Veteran Crisis Line callers, and implementing and evaluating suicide risk among Veterans screened for depression and PTSD.