Circle of Life. Improving Capacity of Swampy Cree Community Members to Recognize People at Risk for Suicide

Circle of Life.Improving Capacity of Swampy Cree Community Members to Recognize People at Risk for Suicide: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study

Primary Hypothesis: Participants in the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) gatekeeper training will be significantly more likely to have increased knowledge and preparedness to help people with suicidal ideation than participants who receive the resilience retreat.

Secondary Hypotheses:

1. Participants in ASIST gatekeeper training will not have higher levels of post-intervention distress or suicidal ideation compared to the resilience retreat.
2. High levels of distress, grief, and alcohol abuse will significantly impact on the learning and retention of suicide intervention skills.

Inclusion criterion: All members of the Swampy Cree Tribal communities who are currently residing on the reserves will be eligible to participate in the study.

Exclusion criterion: Exclusion criteria for the study include being less than 16 years of age, prior training in SafeTALK or ASIST, being an elected official in a First Nations community, and inability to read or write.

Primary outcome: Skills in Suicide Intervention: Suicide Intervention Response Inventory.The Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI) will be used to detect enhancement of intervention skills in participants. The SIRI is a self-administered test that was designed to measure competence in choosing appropriate response to a series of clinical scenarios with suicidal individuals. Research on the SIRI has shown its good psychometric properties, freedom from social desirability effects, and responsiveness to training in suicide prevention. It contains 25 items, each of which consists of a "client" remark and two "helper" responses. Responses are judged based on response options made by highly expert suicidologists. The SIRI has shown good internal consistency with alpha of 0.834, and good test-retest reliability.

Secondary Outcomes:

• Knowledge about suicide, attitudes toward suicide, and self-reported preparedness to intervene with suicidal behavior will be measured by a series of questions that were developed by LivingWorks Inc.
• Gatekeeper behaviors will be measured similar to questions utilized by Wyman in the school-based study that assess how many people had the person asked others about suicide.

Inclusion Criteria:

• All members of the Swampy Cree Tribal communities who are currently residing on the reserves will be eligible to participate in the study.

Exclusion Criteria:

• being less than 16 years of age
• prior training in SafeTALK or ASIST
• being an elected official in a First Nations community