This competitive continuation application seeks funding for two additional waves of data collection to follow-up 600 subjects aged 18--23 years who participated in an NINR-funded prevention project as adolescents. The parent grant funded a control group comparison of two suicide risk interventions. The first involved a brief one to one suicide risk assessment and intervention by a counselor plus a 12-week program skills-training group, Coping and Support Training (CAST). The second involved the counselor assessment and intervention only (C-CARE). The original sample included 460 adolescents at risk for school dropout who were identified as suicide vulnerable (SVY) and a control group of adolescents at risk for dropout but identified as not suicide risks. The purpose of the proposed continuation is to evaluate long-term efficacy of the prevention programs.
The specific aims are: 1) to test for rank order efficacy among the three original study groups for reducing emotional distress, drug involvement, and suicide risk behaviors; 2) to test for rank order efficacy of the three study groups for increasing personal resources and social support resources; and, 3) to estimate and compare models specifying the impact of preventive intervention and mediating protective factors and proximal outcomes on suicide-risk behaviors across time.
