CAST-Plus: A Suicide Prevention Community Partnership
PI - Brooke Randell
University of Washington
Cast-Plus: A Community Suicide Prevention Partnership is a multi-site effectiveness trial of Cast-Plus. CAST-Plus is an indicated prevention program for suicide-vulnerable youth. The intervention addresses one of society’s most disturbing trends: the co-occurrence of suicide-risk behaviors, anger/aggression, and depression among youth. CAST-Plus extends and augments the efficacious school-based Competence & Support Training (CAST) program for potential high school dropouts who are at risk for suicide with an innovative parent component. Parents CARE (P-CARE) is a promising program currently being tested through funding from NINR and CDC. P-CARE includes home visits where parents learn to talk with teens about suicide and help teens practice mood management and healthy decision-making. CAST is delivered during the school day, providing a "dose" of social network support and life skills training that has proven effective in reducing suicide-risk behaviors in this population. P-CARE is delivered at home or a location of the parent’s choice and is designed to augment and support youth skills training and enhance support resources. This approach is designed to reduce known risk factors and enhance protective, mediating factors within individual, family, school and peer contexts. The study will examine the critical features that account for adoption and implementation across sites when communities select best practices and attempt to institutionalize these efforts on behalf of youth in their communities. The sample will consist of 1152 suicide vulnerable, youth in grades 9-12. Individual students' antecedent, mediating and outcome dimensions are measured; process measures will assess the implementation of the parent and school programs including measures of exposure, participation, receptivity and implementation fidelity. Latent growth models will be used to examine variance/covariance structures and changes in outcomes and to test the hypothesized mediating intervention effects.
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Page last modified: September 28, 2006
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