Measuring Associations of the Department of Veterans Affairs' Suicide Prevention Campaign on the Use of Crisis Support Services |
| |
| Authors: | Elizabeth Karras PhD Naiji Lu PhD Guoxin Zuo PhD Xin M. Tu PhD Brady Stephens MS John Draper PhD Caitlin Thompson PhD Robert M. Bossarte PhD |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Veterans Affairs, Rocky Mountain MIRECC for Suicide Prevention, Denver, CO, USA;2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA;3. Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA;4. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Central China Normal University, China;5. VISN 2 Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canandaigua, NY, USA;6. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Link2Health Solutions, Inc., New York, NY, USA;7. Suicide Prevention and Community Engagement Program, Mental Health Services, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA;8. Epidemiology Program, Post‐Deployment Health in the Office of Public Health, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA;9. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA |
| |
| Abstract: | Campaigns have become popular in public health approaches to suicide prevention; however, limited empirical investigation of their impact on behavior has been conducted. To address this gap, utilization patterns of crisis support services associated with the Department of Veterans Affairs' Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) suicide prevention campaign were examined. Daily call data for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, VCL, and 1‐800‐SUICIDE were modeled using a novel semi‐varying coefficient method. Analyses reveal significant increases in call volume to both targeted and broad resources during the campaign. Findings underscore the need for further research to refine measurement of the effects of these suicide prevention efforts. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
