Education and Training > Suicide Research Spotlight Talks
About Monthly Suicide Research Spotlight Talks
CSPAR hosts free suicide research spotlight talks on the third Thursday each month from 9-10am pacific. These presentations will delve into emerging literature on suicide prevention and treatment. Anyone is invited to attend.
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Upcoming Spotlights
February 19, 2026: Ethnic Identity and Other Cultural Aspects Associated with Suicidal Ideation / Global Strategies to Increase Access to Care & Reduce Risk Factors with Dr. Carolina Velez Grau
March 19, 2026: Increasing the Efficacy and Accessibility of Suicide Prevention for the Disability Community with Dr. Lauren Khazem
Find recordings of past research spotlights below.
1/15/26: Decolonizing Suicide Prevention Implementation: Implementation Strategies for Crisis Planning Among Diverse Global Populations
Low- and middle-income countries account for 75% of global suicide deaths but produce less than 10% of research. South Asia has the highest rate of female suicide fatalities worldwide. This talk discusses research to address the disparate burden of suicide through decolonized and co-designed interventions and implementation strategies to optimize their uptake in resource strained settings. We highlight culturally anchored forms of safety planning (and its implementation) that privilege local ways of knowing, doing, and accessing help. We also highlight strategies to measure implementation domains of fidelity, acceptability, and quality.
Over the past year, we’ve featured CSPAR research projects like the ISACC Pilot and the Searchlight Study alongside presentations from our colleagues on THRIVE or Where’s the Evidence for Evidence Based Suicide Prevention? just to name a few.
In our final spotlight for 2025, we reviewed other work happening in the Center for Suicide Prevention and Recovery. Four teams shared the work they’ve been doing this past year. Topics include:
Informing 988 Guidelines for Working with High-Risk Populations
This summer UW CSPAR partnered with HMC Behavioral Health Institute and Equity Is. on a project for Washington’s Healthcare Authority (HCA) to create guidelines and training recommendations for 988 crisis line workers answering calls from people in populations at high risk of suicide, including Veterans, BIPOC, those who identify as LGBTQIA+, and more. Our presentation will review the findings from our literature review and environmental scan exploring the best practices for supporting these groups.
A Rapid Group Analysis Process of Participants’ Periods without Suicidal Ideation
Using data from the Searchlight Study, we analyzed qualitative responses describing participants’ with lived experience of suicidality periods with no suicidal ideation utilizing the Rapid Group Analysis Process (Rap-GAP). Themes from this analysis and the process of conducting this analysis method will be presented in this spotlight.
UW Suicide Care Team Planning Grant
The Suicide Care Team Planning Grant is a 1-year project focused on developing a UW-based Suicide Care Team (SCT) that can respond promptly to referrals of acutely suicidal patients from across the UW system and offer timely follow-up, evidence-based treatment, and care navigation for referred patients, as well as consultation services for providers. Over the past year, the project team has been working on a strategic plan that both meets the needs of the UW community and is financially sustainable, with the intent of launching a 3-year demonstration project funded by Four Pines and approved by UW Medicine starting in 2026. This presentation with highlight work to date and some of the plans for 2026.
DBT Next Steps – Online Clinician Training
DBT Next Steps offers six new DBT skills modules focused on what comes next in recovery for people who have stabilized in DBT. In this presentation, DBT Next Steps book co-author and CSPAR teaching faculty, Adam Carmel, will discuss the development of an online self-paced DBT Next Steps training for DBT clinicians to learn to deliver DBT Next Steps launching in 2026.
10/16/2025: Putting Recovery at the Center: Preliminary data on THRIVE in Crisis Stabilization Centers
More than 5.3 million individuals at risk for suicide seek treatment through emergency departments (EDs), despite the fact that EDs are not well suited for their care. Crisis Stabilization Centers (CSCs) are a person-centered alternative to EDs. CSCs are community-based, recovery-focused centers that operate 24/7 and accept suicidal persons into their receiving centers via crisis walk-ins, police drop-offs, and ED transfers. More than 600 CSCs are operational nationwide and are rapidly expanding across the United States due to the 988 Lifeline expansion. However, research on CSC care outcomes are severely limited, have mixed results, and are difficult to interpret due to methodological constraints. Importantly, CSCs currently have no brief, recovery-focused psychological interventions that can be deployed in this setting with demonstrated effectiveness for reducing suicide risk.
Toward Recovery, Interpersonal growth, Values, and Engagement (THRIVE) is a suicide recovery and care transitions program. THRIVE is theoretically rooted in the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide. In this presentation, Dr. Lockman will describe the theoretical framework for THRIVE, share preliminary data, and discuss the importance of a paradigm shift toward recovery-focused interventions to help suicidal persons not only stay safe and “not die” but THRIVE.
9/18/2025: Detecting Suicide Risk from Short Term Risk Factors and Google Searches: A Prospective Longitudinal Study over One-Year
Social media and search engine companies, such as Google, use the wealth of data at their disposal to create algorithms to predict suicide risk, and provide interventions based on company policies and outputs from these algorithms. Neither the details of these algorithms nor their accuracy in risk prediction are shared with the public, thus research is needed to verify whether algorithms applied to search engine data can accurately predict suicide risk. To address this gap, the Searchlight Study recruited 485 adults with lived experience of suicidal thoughts and behavior to participate in a gold standard interview of their past year suicidal thoughts and behavior, complete prospective surveys of suicidal thoughts and behavior every two weeks for one year and donate their Google Search and YouTube data for this entire period.
In this presentation, members of the Searchlight Study team will share important lessons learned from conducting research entirely online, recruiting participants, and acquiring Google Search data from said participants. They will present the main findings of the study, including development of ‘features’ (i.e., categorization of searches) from participants’ Search data and detection of heightened suicide risk utilizing the developed features. In addition, we will present the associations between warning signs for suicide attempts and short-term changes in suicidal ideation from our prospective surveys.
8/21/2025: Rumination, Mindfulness, and EMA (RUME) Pilot Study: Exploring Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) Methods To Enhance Use of Digital Mindfulness Apps for Non-Suicidal Self-Injury
Non suicidal self-injury (NSSI), intentional self-inflicted injury to one’s body with no suicidal intent, is one of the strongest predictors of future suicidal ideation and attempts. People with NSSI are found to have greater emotion dysregulation, greater rumination, and poorer executive functioning, all of which can lead to difficulties with consistent skills engagement. Mindfulness – a core skill in evidence-based treatments for NSSI – has been found to target many of these deficits and may be particularly relevant due to a proliferation of digital mindfulness interventions (DMI) in recent years. Although DMI have potential, cognitive-affective deficits underlying NSSI may exacerbate difficulties with effective and consistent use of DMI to receive its benefits.
In this presentation, Dr. Cheung will share findings from the pilot study, RUME, that aimed to develop a program of ecological momentary assessment (EMA)-based habit-formation strategies to boost user engagement and treatment effects of a DMI app. The presentation will highlight quantitative and qualitative feedback from participants that were used to inform design considerations, as well as explorations on the use of EMA as both an intervention and outcome measure in self-harm research.
7/17/2025: Detecting suicide risk among U.S. Service members and Veterans
Suicide is a leading cause of death among U.S. military Service members and Veterans. Unfortunately, many military personnel at risk for suicide do not receive mental health treatment due to both attitudinal (e.g., stigma) and structural barriers. One way to improve resource availability for at risk individuals outside of traditional healthcare settings is to harness social media. Self-disclosures related to mental health and suicide are relatively common on social media, which may provide an opportunity to identify people who would likely benefit from help.
In this presentation Dr. Zuromski discussed how her research team developed an algorithm to identify posts with suicide-related content on a military-specific social media platform and the implications of this research.
5/15/2025: Informatics Supported Authorship of Caring Contacts (ISACC) Pilot: Innovations, Findings, And Lessons Learned
Caring Contacts (CC) is one of the few low-cost interventions demonstrating protective effects against suicide and has been demonstrated to potentially positively affect other areas of an individual’s mental health besides reducing suicide attempts and ideation. However, CC is inconsistently implemented and can be labor intensive, limiting its adoption and impact. For an intervention to be effective, it must be easy to use (usable), realistic to implement in daily life (feasible), and perceived as supportive and relevant by its users (acceptable). As such, the pilot team conducted a needs assessment using qualitative methods including focus groups, interviews with participants as well as our pilot experience to inform the design considerations for an informatics tool to facilitate the CC intervention and a toolkit to help users implement this scalable intervention.
In this presentation, the study team will share findings from pilot work and how these findings informed the development and optimization of our CC web-app and toolkit. They highlighted methodological innovations that were piloted and are now being used in our clinical trial including the co-design method, strategies for online recruitment, and the use of EMA blocks to examine the effectiveness of ISACC and explored the active mechanisms involved in the intervention.
5/7/2025: Using Rapid Group Analysis Process (Rap-GAP) to expedite qualitative data analysis for dissemination and implementation research in health care settings: An Overview Presentation
To contribute to implementation and dissemination efforts, qualitative health research must be able to move at a rapid pace that keeps up with the constantly changing demands of real-world practice settings. In this presentation we introduce a novel approach for rapid qualitative data analysis: Rapid Group Analysis Process (Rap-GAP). Rap-GAP builds and improves upon existing rapid qualitative methods and leverages online technology to facilitate an efficient iterative group process. This method offers a clear process and practical tools to help teams analyze qualitative data on a timeline that will allow them to contribute meaningfully to implementation and dissemination efforts in health care settings.
During the presentation Drs. Hsu and Angerhofer: 1) Described the 5-step Rap-GAP process and demonstrate how to use the method and adapt it for different analytical goals, 2) Introduced tools and templates designed to make Rap-GAP easy to carry out, 3) provided a case example and 4) answered specific questions participants may have regarding the Rap-GAP process.
3/20/2025: It’s Not Quite the Same: Recommendations for Data Safety Monitoring Boards for Research on Suicidal Thoughts & Behaviors
Data Safety Monitoring Boards (DSMBs) have become increasingly common in psychosocial research trials – particularly those with participants who are considered vulnerable or where the research is taking place at multiple sites, both of which characterize trials of suicide interventions.
DSMBs are helpful to the investigative team, yet many researchers conducting psychosocial intervention or suicide research have limited exposure to DSMBs compared to their medical research colleagues and thus DSMBs can be confusing not only for the investigative team but also for the experts who are asked to serve as members or chairs.
In collaboration with Dr. Greg Simon, Dr. Comtois developed an innovative suicide research specific DSMB format and in this presentation, Dr. Comtois integrated her experience and expertise with a review of the DSMB literature to address key issues in psychosocial intervention and suicide research designed for current and future investigators, as well as, DSMB members and chairs.
