Helping Callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Who Are at Imminent Risk of Suicide: Evaluation of Caller Risk Profiles and Interventions Implemented

Crisis lines are settings where identifying individuals at imminent risk of suicidal behavior and intervening to keep them safe are critical activities. We examined clinical characteristics of crisis callers assessed by telephone crisis helpers as being at imminent risk of suicide, and the interventions implemented with these callers. Data were derived from 491 call reports completed by 132 helpers at eight crisis centers in the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline network. Helpers actively engaged the callers in collaborating to keep themselves safe on 76.4% of calls and sent emergency services without the callers' collaboration on 24.6% of calls. Four different profiles of imminent risk calls emerged. Caller profiles and some helper characteristics were associated with intervention type. Our findings provide a first step toward an empirical formulation of imminent risk warning signs and recommended interventions.     

Trajectories of Suicidal Ideation from Sixth through Tenth Grades in Predicting Suicide Attempts in Young Adulthood in an Urban African American Cohort

The trajectory of suicidal ideation across early adolescence may inform the timing of suicide prevention program implementation. This study aimed to identify developmental trajectories of suicidal ideation among an urban cohort of community‐residing African Americans (AA) longitudinally followed from middle school through early adulthood (ages 11–19 years). Subtypes based on the developmental course of suicidal ideation from late childhood through mid‐adolescence were identified using longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA) with 581 AA adolescents (52.7% male; 71.1% free or reduced school meals). The developmental trajectories of suicidal ideation were then used to predict suicide attempts in young adulthood. Our LLCA indicated two subtypes (i.e., ideators and nonideators), with 8% of the sample in the ideator class. This trajectory class shows a peak of suicidal ideation in seventh grade and a steady decline in ideation in subsequent grades. Additionally, suicidal ideation trajectories significantly predicted suicide attempt. Results of these analyses suggest the need for suicide prevention approaches prior to high school for AA youth.     

What Does “Mind-Wandering” Mean to the Folk? An Empirical Investigation

Although mind-wandering research is rapidly progressing, stark disagreements are emerging about what the term “mind-wandering” means. Four prominent views define mind-wandering as (a) task-unrelated thought, (b) stimulus-independent thought, (c) unintentional thought, or (d) dynamically unguided thought. Although theorists claim to capture the ordinary understanding of mind-wandering, no systematic studies have assessed these claims. Two large factorial studies present participants (N = 545) with vignettes that describe someone's thoughts and ask whether her mind was wandering, while systematically manipulating features relevant to the four major accounts of mind-wandering. Dynamics explains between four and 40 times more variance in participants' mind-wandering judgments than other features. Our third study (N = 153) tests and supports a unique prediction of the dynamic framework—obsessive rumination contrasts with mind-wandering. Our final study (N = 277) used vignettes that resemble mind-wandering experiments. Dynamics had significant and large effects, while task-unrelatedness was nonsignificant. These results strongly suggest that the central feature of mind-wandering is its dynamics.