Healing and engaging after loss (heal) - in 2019, during the 86TH texas legislative session, several bills were enacted to address suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention throughout the state

Senate bill (SB) 11 and house bill (HB) 18 required suicide prevention, intervention and postvention training for school staff. Additionally, HB 3980 required the statewide behavioral health coordinating council (sbhcc) to complete a comprehensive report on current suicide prevention efforts being implemented by state agencies who receive state funding for behavioral health services and to identify and outline potential gaps and barriers within these efforts across the state. In 2020, the sbhcc completed this report and made recommendations for improving suicide-related data collection to better inform policy and procedures, and to decrease suicide to those at highest risk for suicide. The health and human services commission's (hhsc) state suicide prevention team is proposing project healing and engaging after loss (heal), a partnership with select local mental health authorities (lmhas) that serve geographic areas with higher rates of suicide deaths to strengthen suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention support and services to individuals, families, and communities. The population of focus is children and transition age youth (youth), ages 10-24, who are at risk for or have mental health disorders that may lead to a suicide attempt or death, including those identified at higher risk for suicide after a suicide attempt or a suicide death of a friend or a loved one. The hhsc state suicide prevention team has identified five goals and eighteen key strategies designed to provide the greatest impact for the population of focus. The identified goals and objectives for the project are to: 1) implement an engagement and transition plan for youth, ages 10-24, who are at risk for suicide, prior to and following discharge from an acute inpatient psychiatric facility and or emergency department to outpatient lmha services by implementing a caring contacts program between nine identified lmhas and at least one acute psychiatric facility or emergency department in each lmha's largest county serving 750 youth by end of project period; 2) increase the capacity and competency of lmha staff to screen, assess, manage, and treat youth at risk for suicide by providing training in the utilization of the columbia-suicide severity rating scale (c-ssrs), the child and adolescent needs and strengths (cans) assessment, and safety planning intervention (SPI) to at least 125 lmha staff and an additional 150 individuals across the state with a total of 1000 staff trained by the end of the project period; 3) increase awareness, early identification, and intervention for youth, ages 10-24, who are at risk for suicide by providing about suicide to save a life (as+k) training for at least 350 individuals in youth-serving organizations per year for a total of 1,750 trained by the end of the project period; 4) establish local outreach to survivors of suicide (loss) teams in the identified lmhas to provide immediate postvention support, services, resources, and connection to support groups to families and peers of youth who have died by suicide beginning in their largest counties with the potential to impact a total of 2,000 individuals across 63 counties; and 5) establish and expand youth prevention and postvention support for youth who may be at risk for suicide by initiating and supporting partnerships between 25 public school districts and or 10 colleges or universities, and organizations which promote suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention programming in schools, to implement at least one suicide prevention program with a total of 1,000 students being positively impacted through this support collaboration.