Sharpen Suicide Prevention

Sharpen® Suicide Prevention and Postvention: Best Practices for Clinical and Community Settings course features national researchers, experts with clinical expertise in suicide prevention and individuals with lived expertise. This four-hour course prepares behavioral health clinicians, school-based professionals, care managers, nurses and community health workers to screen for suicide risk, respond to a positive screen, build a safety plan with a client in real time, and support a community after a loss.

Sharpen® draws on twenty years of prevention work in schools, health systems and communities, reaching 87,792 people through live trainings before any of it became digital. The curriculum was written by practitioners who first certified in the field's gold-standard models, including CONNECT postvention through the South Carolina Office of Suicide Prevention, and it is structured against the five pillars of the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. It integrates independently validated tools: the Columbia Protocol, the Stanley-Brown Safety Planning Intervention, CAT-MH® adaptive screening, and 988 routing alongside locally vetted crisis resources. It is the professional training component of VNS Health Safe Pathways, a five-year New York State Office of Mental Health suicide prevention initiative, where it has been delivered to 534 participants across 23 cohorts with more than 200 certifications issued. Among trained providers, confidence in suicide risk management improved significantly (p = .001), the proportion reporting high confidence rose from 48.9% to 72.3%, and the low-confidence group was eliminated entirely. Of participants surveyed, 94.8% called the training a good use of their time and 95.5% would recommend it.

Learning Objectives:

1. Suicide screening best practices

• Describe validated suicide screening instruments, including the Columbia Protocol, and identify when each is indicated
• Demonstrate how to ask directly about suicidal ideation, intent and plan
• Summarize current research on suicide risk factors among the youth and young adult populations you serve
• Identify the threshold at which a screening result requires escalation, and name the crisis response pathways available in your setting

2. Digital safety planning

• Explain the evidence supporting safety planning as a brief suicide prevention intervention
• List the seven components of a safety plan and describe the purpose of each
• Describe how protective factors reduce suicide risk and identify at least three to reinforce with a client
• Apply a digital safety plan and resiliency toolkit with a client in real time

3. Suicide prevention best practices

• Differentiate warning signs from risk factors
• Identify evidence-based public health protective factors for suicide
• Apply strength-based approaches when working with youth

4. Postvention and supporting a community after a loss

• Define postvention and explain its relationship to prevention
• Describe the mechanisms of suicide contagion and identify who is at elevated risk following a loss
• Apply safe messaging guidelines to a communication you would actually send
• Locate and use national postvention and media guideline resourcesSuicide screening best practices
• increase confidence and competence in conducting a suicide screening with high risk patients
• understand recent research regarding Risk factors for suicide specific to NYC youth
• learn practical strategies for How to ASK and screen
• gain understanding regarding How and when to connect to VNS Health services and local crisis response support