# Impact of clinician Virtual Human Interaction training in Emotional Self-Awareness on patients Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Crisis Syndrome: a Randomized Controlled Trial

> **NIH NIH R34** · ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI · 2021 · $101,594

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Despite years of research and intensified public attention, suicide rates continue to climb and
suicide remains a leading cause of death for 18-65 year-olds in the United States. Half of suicide
decedents see a clinician in the months prior to dying by suicide providing a unique opportunity
for a potentially life-saving intervention. Working with suicidal patients is highly stressful for
clinicians and often elicits powerful negative emotional responses that may adversely affect
suicidal outcomes. Possible reasons lie in that negative emotional responses may result in less
empathic communication and unwitting rejection of the patient, which are liable to damage the
therapeutic alliance. Thus there is a need for clinician training in effective management of their
negative emotions towards suicidal patients, which would result in the improvement of suicidal
outcomes. To be impactful, the training must be web-based, scalable and easy to disseminate.
In this project, we will adress this critical need and use Vitrual Human Interaction (VHI) to train
outpatient clinicians in emotional self-awarenss (ESA), which includes both recognition of one’s
own negative emotional respones and ability to engage in verbal empathic communication with
acutely suicidal patients. Further, we will establish if the VHI ESA training intervention for
clinicians will be superior to the VHI Control condition of risk assessment in reducing their patients’
suicidal ideation and the severity of their Suicide Crisis Syndrome. We will also determine if
therapeutic alliance is a mediator of the relationship between clinicians’ ESA and their patients’
suicidal outcomes. For this purpose, we will use our established empathy-teaching platform and
we will assess verbal empathy with the Empathic Communication Coding System, and will assess
the impact of clinician training with our novel validated instruments: the Therapist Response
Questionnaire – Suicide Form which assesses negative emotional responses to suicidal patients,
and the Suicide Crisis Inventory, which predicts near-term suicidal behavior. If we are sucessful,
the proposed work may have a broad impact on clinician training and practice by adding an ESA
dimension to clinicians’ training in evidence-based suicide risk assessment. Suicide is
preventable and it is our goal to create an industry-standard platform to train clinicians in ESA,
thereby improving their skills and confidence in interacting with suicidal patients, which can
ultimately save lives.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10415520
- **Project number:** 3R34MH119294-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI
- **Principal Investigator:** Igor Galynker
- **Activity code:** R34 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $101,594
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2021-07-23 → 2021-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10415520

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10415520, Impact of clinician Virtual Human Interaction training in Emotional Self-Awareness on patients Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Crisis Syndrome: a Randomized Controlled Trial (3R34MH119294-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10415520. Licensed CC0.

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