Sharpen® Suicide Safety Planning (1 hour)

Sharpen® Suicide Safety Planning

1 contact hour · Asynchronous · Continuing education available

Resiliency Technologies, Inc. has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7243. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Resiliency Technologies, Inc. is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Evidence base

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 four strategic directions of the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024).

The course is led by Alex Karydi, Ph.D., LMFT, CASAC II, Director of State and Territorial Initiatives at the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, the only federally supported resource center dedicated to advancing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. It teaches the Stanley-Brown Safety Planning Intervention, developed for use at the first point of clinical contact with a person in suicidal crisis (Stanley & Brown, 2012). Young people also appear on film speaking about their own experience of distress, help-seeking and recovery.

Across nine emergency departments, patients who received a safety plan paired with structured follow-up contact engaged in suicidal behavior at 3.03% over six months compared with 5.29% under usual care, a 45% reduction, and were about twice as likely to attend at least one outpatient mental health visit (Stanley et al., 2018). A meta-analysis of six controlled studies covering 3,536 participants found a 43% reduction in the relative risk of suicidal behavior, with no significant effect on suicidal ideation (Nuij et al., 2021). The course teaches the intervention as what the evidence supports: a bridge across the hours and days when risk is highest, and not a substitute for treatment.

The course 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 (Rios & Biber, 2024).

Learning objectives

• 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

Sources

Nuij, C., van Ballegooijen, W., de Beurs, D., Juniar, D., Erlangsen, A., Portzky, G., O'Connor, R. C., Smit, J. H., Kerkhof, A., & Riper, H. (2021). Safety planning-type interventions for suicide prevention: Meta-analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 219(2), 419-426. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2021.50

Rios, I., & Biber, D. (2024). Sharpen® health care worker app data [Program evaluation]. Resiliency Technologies, Inc.

Stanley, B., & Brown, G. K. (2012). Safety planning intervention: A brief intervention to mitigate suicide risk. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 19(2), 256-264. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2011.01.001

Stanley, B., Brown, G. K., Brenner, L. A., Galfalvy, H. C., Currier, G. W., Knox, K. L., Chaudhury, S. R., Bush, A. L., & Green, K. L. (2018). Comparison of the safety planning intervention with follow-up vs usual care of suicidal patients treated in the emergency department. JAMA Psychiatry, 75(9), 894-900. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.1776

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2024). 2024 national strategy for suicide prevention.

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