# Screening and Brief Intervention for Suicidality and Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Among Youth in the Juvenile Justice System

> **NIH NIH R34** · BROWN UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $243,403

## Abstract

Project Summary
 The Juvenile Justice System (JJS) has not implemented any evidenced-based interventions
that address suicidal behavior or nonsuicidal self-injury, hereafter referred collectively to as self-
injury, with JJS-involved youth. This application proposes to test a scalable intervention, safety
planning, that aims to reduce self-injury in adolescents involved in the JJS. Safety planning,
which can be a stand-alone brief intervention, was cited as a best practice by the Suicide
Prevention Resource Center/American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Best Practices
Registry for Suicide Prevention. This study will have two phases. In Phase I, we will conduct an
open trial with 10 adolescents which will allow us to make any modifications necessary for using
the protocol in a Probation Department. We will then randomize 60 youth on Probation who
screen positive for recent self-injury into standard care or the safety planning intervention.
Counselors with community mental health experience embedded in Probation will conduct the
intervention, consistent with the co-responder model found across JJS in the U.S. in which a
Probation Officer works collaboratively with a mental health professional to coordinate care. In
order to further conduct the study under conditions most relevant to a future implementation
trial, we will also employ a training approach that we have successfully implemented in a
psychiatric hospital with Bachelors and Masters level staff. In Phase II, of the study, we will: a)
conduct qualitative interviews in Probation about attitudes toward the intervention as well as
barriers to a future, larger implementation trial; and b) contract with the National Center for
Mental Health and Juvenile Justice to conduct a Sequential Intercept Model (SIM) Mapping. The
SIM is a conceptual framework to outline a series of “points of interception” along the JJS
continuum in a state where screening and brief intervention may be implemented. In the
Mapping, we will examine the JJS continuum from arrest; to an initial hearing; to jail awaiting
trial or adjudication; incarceration; to release or reentry; and finally, to community supervision.
We believe this data will provide a working framework to help assess current views within the
statewide JJS as a starting point to proposing a future, larger trial. This research also has the
potential to directly inform treatment practices in JJ settings and has significant implications for
scalability and dissemination in order to build a stronger, more effective system of mental
health/JJS collaboration around self-injury screening and intervention.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9923764
- **Project number:** 5R34MH114307-03
- **Recipient organization:** BROWN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Kathleen Kemp
- **Activity code:** R34 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $243,403
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-07-15 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9923764

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9923764, Screening and Brief Intervention for Suicidality and Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Among Youth in the Juvenile Justice System (5R34MH114307-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9923764. Licensed CC0.

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