A top New York State mental health official on September 19 praised Tompkins County’s “outstanding commitment to suicide prevention,” noting the strides made by its healthcare providers to implement the Zero Suicide Model.
Jenna Heise, director of Implementation at Suicide Prevention Center of New York
“Tompkins County has proven itself as a strong partner in the ongoing collective efforts to prevent the loss of lives due to suicide and promote mental health for all community members,” said Jenna Heise, director of Implementation at the Office of Mental Health’s Suicide Prevention Center.
“Tompkins County’s persistence and dedication to implementing the Zero Suicide Model has set an important precedent, not only within your community but across the broader suicide prevention landscape. I’m delighted to acknowledge and celebrate Tompkins County’s outstanding commitment to suicide prevention and the strides made in advancing the Zero Suicide Model locally,” said Heise in a message to the Tompkins County Suicide Prevention Coalition.
Zero Suicide is an emerging standard designed to save lives by closing gaps in the suicide care offered by health and behavioral health providers. The model provides a practical framework for system-wide quality improvement in areas including training staff in current best practices, identifying at-risk individuals through comprehensive screening and assessment, and engaging at-risk patients with effective care management, evidence-based treatments, and safe care transition.
Heise praised plans for a September town hall in Ithaca, organized by the Suicide Prevention Coalition, to update the community on the suicide prevention efforts.
“Such events are critical for engaging the general public, raising awareness about suicide prevention, and fostering a platform for meaningful discussions. We believe that engaging the community is paramount and applaud Tompkins County’s proactive approach. The collaborative nature and passion exhibited by Tompkins County is inspiring,” Heise said.
If you or someone you know feels the need to speak with a mental health professional, you can call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 9-8-8, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741-741.
“A large volume of research with diverse populations and age groups shows that social connectedness is one of the most important factors in determining not only our mental health, but also our physical health,” according to the Suicide Prevention Center’s announcement.
The center said that the conference experts will summarize the latest prevention science and explain why we should all be more focused on supporting social connection across the lifespan—from early childhood and adolescence through our working and older-age years.
“Participants will be able to take ideas showcased in the conference back to their diverse communities and begin or build on existing work aimed at supporting healthy social connection,” the center said.
Physicians, social workers, mental health counselors, peers, psychologists can receive CEU credits and CASACs for many of the sessions.
September 20, 2022
Making the Case for Connection & Innovative Models for At-Risk Groups
“Leveraging Community Engagement to Promote Mental Health Equity and Connection Across the Lifespan”
Sidney Hankerson, MD, MBA
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Director, Mental Health Equity Research, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“What matters most in health and happiness? Insights from the Harvard Longitudinal Study”
Robert Waldinger, MD
Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
“iGen: Understanding the mental health risks of Gen Z”
Jean Twenge, PhD
Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University
“Social Isolation and Loneliness as Risk Factors for Early Mortality; and Social Connection as a Protective Factor: What the Latest Science Tells Us” (Keynote)
Julianne Holt-Lundstadt, PhD
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Brigham Young University
“Innovative Models for at-risk populations: Exploring the unique and common elements of these community engagement models” (Round Table Discussion)
September 21, 2022
Connection Across the Lifespan
“We Are the Medicine: Building Relational Systems of Care to Take Positive Childhood Experiences to Scale”
Christina Bethell, PhD, MPH, MBA
Professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University & Director of the Child & Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative
“Social and School Connectedness: Key Contributors to Adolescent Mental Health and Suicide Risk” (Keynote)
Cheryl King, PhD
Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Youth Depression and Suicide Prevention Program at the University of Michigan
“Working Minds: Why Peer Support Matters for Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Promotion at Work”
Sally Spencer-Thomas
President of United Suicide Survivors International, clinical psychologist, inspirational international speaker and impact entrepreneur
Jose Ballejo
UA VIP instructor/BTJ Pipefitter, retired U.S. Army Sergeant 1st Class, and member of UA Local 58
“Connecting and Contributing: AmeriCorps Seniors Service as Upstream Suicide Prevention for Older Adults”
Kim Van Orden, PhD
Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center
Atalaya Sergi
Director, Americorps Seniors
Mary Hyde, PhD
Director, Office of Research and Evaluation AmeriCorps
“DBT STEPS-A: A school-based social emotional learning program for adolescents in Central New York & Brooklyn”
James Mazza, PhD | Elizabeth Dexter-Mazza, PhD | Alexandra Hernandez | Jacklyn Beck
“Inspiring Comfort: A skills program for compassionate connecting”
Jen Marr | Taylor Walls
“HealthySteps NY: An early childhood development support program for families that is expanding statewide”
Hetal Tangal, MD | Allison Lieber, LCSW | David Beguin, MD, PhD | Laura Sigel | Marcia Rice, RN, MS
“Connection Planning: A workshop for mental health clinicians working with socially isolated/lonely clients”
Kim Van Orden, PhD
September 22, 2022
Community-level Connection &Stories of Hope from Attempt Survivors
“Connect: A social network health suicide prevention program”
Peter Wyman
Professor and Director of the School and Community-Based Prevention Laboratory at the University of Rochester
Anthony R. Pisani, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics
Bryan Yates, B.A
Senior Human Subjects Research Coordinator Department of Psychiatry University of Rochester School of Medicine
Chelsea Keller Elliott, MS, LMFT
Senior Research – Prevention Specialist University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry
“Embedding social relations and community into primary care—A population approach” (Keynote)
Helen Kingston, MD
Primary care physician at Frome Medical Practice in Frome, Somerset, England
“Real stories of hope and connection from suicide attempt survivors”
Tony Trahan (Moderator)
Deputy Director of the New York State Office of Consumer Affairs
Dillon Browne, LMSW
Licensed social worker, coordinating daily operations for MHA Westchester’s Sterling Community Center
Emily Childress, MPA, CPS-P
Network Manager for Wellness Collaborative of NY IPA
Jeff McQueen, MBA, LCDC
Executive Director of the Mental Health Association of Nassau County
Digna Quinones
Regional Advocacy Specialist, New York State Office of Mental Health – Office of Consumer Affairs
Top healthcare leaders in Tompkins County have agreed to form a steering committee to drive local implementation of the Zero Suicide Model, an emerging standard designed to save lives by closing gaps in the suicide care offered by and across healthcare providers.
Zero Suicide roundtable participants, July 20
The move came during “Zero Suicide Roundtable: A Discussion on Best Practices in Suicide Prevention with Tompkins County Healthcare Leaders,” hosted on July 20 at the Statler Hotel by The Sophie Fund and Tompkins County Mental Health Services.
The two-hour roundtable was moderated by Jenna Heise, director of Suicide Prevention Implementation at the Office of Mental Health’s Suicide Prevention Center of New York.
The 13 roundtable participants represented Cayuga Medical Center, Guthrie Cortland Medical Center, Tompkins County Health Department, Tompkins County Mental Health Services, Family & Children’s Service of Ithaca, Suicide Prevention & Crisis Service, Cornell University, Tompkins Cortland Community College, and The Sophie Fund.
The leaders’ agreement is a step toward fulfilling Goal 2 of the Tompkins County Suicide Prevention Coalition’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan, adopted last February, which calls for “quality improvement for suicide care in all Tompkins County healthcare and behavioral health settings.”
The strategic plan’s Objective 2.3 calls for the formation of a “Zero Suicide Work Group comprised of leading health and mental health providers to share ideas, experiences, and challenges, and lead collaborative, sustainable efforts to implement the Zero Suicide Model throughout Tompkins County.”
Harmony Ayers-Friedlander, deputy commissioner of Tompkins County Mental Health Services, introduced Heise to the gathering “as we renew our commitment to the implementation of the Zero Suicide Model in our community, within, and across, our healthcare settings.” She noted that the county’s Suicide Prevention Coalition was launched exactly five years earlier with the vision of “a community where no lives are lost to suicide.”
Addressing the healthcare leaders, Ayers-Friedlander added:
“Your presence here today serves as a reminder of just how important this work is. Zero Suicide works. Because it gives us hope that we can make a difference, direction through a systems-based framework when faced with the complexity of human suffering, and real tools that help us at each step of the way. Today is a time to evaluate where we are individually as institutions and collectively as a community in preventing suicide through this model.”
Jenna Heise, director of New York State’s Suicide Prevention Implementation, moderates a Zero Suicide leadership roundtable
Heise opened the roundtable with a brief overview of the Zero Suicide Model and then walked participants through a discussion on the model’s seven elements: leadership, training, screening and assessment, care planning, treatment, transition of care, and quality improvement.
“The foundational belief of Zero Suicide is that individuals in our care, on our watch, need not die by suicide, and that suicide is actually preventable for those in care,” Heise said. “The way that happens is that suicide prevention and suicide care become a core priority for health and behavioral health. We have not done a good job of that, frankly.”
“We need to have that leadership commitment,” Heise said. Under the model, she explained, a leadership commitment creates a “just culture” for suicide care that relies on systemic use of best practices rather than leaving suicide prevention to individual health workers.
“It has to be looked at as a systems problem,” she said. “For too long, we have left it to the crisis team or to one outstanding individual clinician or social worker, and our systems, or the newest person, the greenest person straight out of school, who had no schooling in suicide.”
Citing examples of successful implementation of Zero Suicide, such as in the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan, Heise added: “It is an aspirational goal but it is quite attainable. There are folks that have done this work and committed to it, and followed this framework in implementing the seven elements, and they have shown that you could significantly reduce the suicides, by rate and number, within your healthcare organization.”
Heise commended Tompkins County’s approach to creating a “safer suicide community, wrapped around health and behavioral healthcare, including partners on board like the health department, behavioral health, large health systems, universities, higher ed, and so forth. That’s where you start to really see impact, everybody speaking the same language, using the same tools, the same best practices, the same framework. This is very exciting.”
Participants shared their experiences with various aspects of suicide prevention measures within their systems. They noted the importance of cross-system coordination and integration for suicide care, the challenge of staffing, and a desire for greater suicide-specific training. Several participants noted their continuous quality improvement efforts in suicide care but said they did not follow the Zero Suicide Model per se.
The Sophie Fund provided participants with a packet of materials about the Zero Suicide Model and previous suicide prevention efforts that have been undertaken in Tompkins County. The packet included the following items:
The roundtable was the fifth and final session of a Zero Suicide initiative launched by The Sophie Fund last November. Previous events included:
“Call to Action: Suicide Prevention in Healthcare,” an expert briefing on the Zero Suicide Model for Tompkins County healthcare leaders, on November 16 by Jenna Heise, Director of Suicide Prevention Implementation at the Suicide Prevention Center of New York.
“Implementation of Zero Suicide,” a suicide prevention presentation for front line managers, on March 24 by Tammy Weppelman, State Suicide Prevention Coordinator at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
If you or someone you know feels the need to speak with a mental health professional, you can call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 9-8-8, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741-741.
The Suicide Prevention Center of New York’s “AIM for Zero: Suicide Care is Healthcare” symposium September 28-30 featured 11 outstanding presentations by leading experts on the Zero Suicide Model for healthcare. The presentations covered the model’s history, evidence base, core elements, screening and assessment tools, use in primary care, emergency departments, and crisis care systems, and special implications for preventing suicide among Black adolescents, LGBTQ youth, and members of tribal nations.
“Best Practices for Primary Care”Virna Little, Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder of Concert Health, a national organization providing behavioral health services to primary care providers[WATCH VIDEO]
“A Zero Suicide Story”Wykisha McKinney, Zero Suicide Program Manager at The Harris Center for Mental Health & IDD (Intellectual or Developmental Disability)[WATCH VIDEO]
If you or someone you know feels the need to speak with a mental health professional, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741-741.
Wykisha McKinney lost her brother Johnny to suicide in 2004 and subsequently struggled with suicidal thoughts herself as she coped with a beloved sibling’s death.
In “A Zero Suicide Story,” a presentation at the Suicide Prevention Center of New York’s “AIM for Zero: Suicide Care is Healthcare” symposium September 28-30, she shared her personal story to illustrate the importance of the Zero Suicide Model’s commitment to patient care and a “just culture” for care providers, and the key role that loss survivors like herself play in implementing safer suicide care.
McKinney, Zero Suicide Program Manager at The Harris Center for Mental Health & IDD (Intellectual or Developmental Disability), said that Johnny was a Texas A&M University grad, an advocate for Black LGBTQ people, and a case manager at a Houston-area clinic for men who were HIV positive.
He was diagnosed with AIDS in 2000 and the illness took a heavy toll on him physically and emotionally, she said. He took his own life shortly after his doctor advised him to be admitted to the hospital to treat his worsening infection.
Last in a Series about the Zero Suicide Model for Healthcare
McKinney said that her brother’s death led her to become a suicide prevention advocate who asks many questions:
“What if my brother would have been screened for suicide risk on his routine visit to his doctor who was aware that he was HIV positive, who was aware that he had had an escalation in his health problems, and who was aware that his health issues were getting to the point where he was thinking about and discussing end of life decisions? What if the hospital system and the clinics prepared their doctors who all worked with HIV positive folks diagnosed with AIDS were all trained in how to screen and assess for suicide, and collaboratively create a safety plan? What if they were able to connect Johnny to a mental health professional? So those [steps] would help to close those gaps.”
The Zero Suicide Model, McKinney said, “answers the ‘what if.’ It tells us what could happen if these things take place. It tells us what could happen if we add or tweak our policies and procedures in a way that could promote life-saving practices.”
McKinney said that the Zero Suicide framework is defined by a system-wide organizational commitment to safer suicide care and behavioral health care. “It represents a culture shift away from fragmented suicide care toward a holistic and comprehensive commitment to patient safety as the most fundamental responsibility of healthcare,” she said.
“For me as a survivor of suicide loss, someone whose brother was actively involved in the health system and visited a health care practitioner the day before he died, I see the value of Zero Suicide. My personal story speaks to the importance of Zero Suicide.”
She explained how Zero Suicide promotes a just culture of practice for healthcare practitioners. “The Zero Suicide framework is not designed to point fingers at people, which is what’s wonderful about it,” she said. “Oftentimes when you implement new new procedures or new practices or when you tell your organization we’re going to evaluate how we do things, people may think that you mean you want to evaluate what I did or what I’m doing wrong. But the Zero Suicide framework is designed to look at the system as a whole. So it looks at that system and it identifies where those gaps are.”
Survivors of suicide loss regularly ask themselves about the “what-ifs,” McKinney said. “I’m not in any way saying that my brother’s medical professionals were responsible for his death, woulda, coulda, shoulda or he would be here today. What I’m saying is that the Zero Suicide framework provides an opportunity where the Johnnys of the future or the Johnnys of today have more opportunity to receive help and care throughout their time with their doctors.”
McKinney said that her position at Texas’s Harris Center reflects how engaging suicide attempt survivors and loss survivors is a key component of the Zero Suicide framework.
“My perspective of the healthcare system and the mental health care system is a little bit different,” she said. “I can see both perspectives, the perspective of the organization and the perspectives of a survivor of suicide loss. It creates an equitable workplace. It helps with quality improvement as it inspires innovation to improve the services. Sometimes our executives have a perspective of what of what may be happening and it may be a little bit different from what actually is happening.
“And so engaging those with lived experience. especially those who’ve had experience with working through your health system, can help to open your eyes and enlighten you on how these systems that are embedded in our policies and procedures work. It helps to develop employee and volunteer skills and their knowledge of suicide prevention beyond the theoretical and textbook learning. For the organization, it builds community involvement, it helps us to build relationships of trust with the communities and individuals.”
Adoption of the Zero Suicide framework also provides valuable opportunities to people with lived experience, McKinney said. “It transforms our painful experience into creating positive solutions,” she explained. “For me, as a survivor of suicide loss, helping is healing. Helping was my therapy.”
If you or someone you know feels the need to speak with a mental health professional, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741-741.
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