The Safety Planning Intervention (also known as the Stanley-Brown Safety Plan; SPI; Stanley & Brown, 2012) is a widely used brief intervention and has been shown to reduce suicidal behaviors and to increase treatment engagement when coupled with brief follow-up phone contact (Stanley et al, JAMA Psychiatry, 2018). It is widely used by organizations implementing the Zero Suicide model as well as the Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC).  The intent of SPI is to help individuals lower their imminent risk for suicidal behavior by employing a pre-determined set of potential coping strategies and a list of individuals or agencies whom they may contact.

In this webinar, Drs. Barbara Stanley and Gregory Brown will discuss the rationale for conducting a brief Safety Planning Intervention and how to set the stage for high quality safety planning, identify typical areas of safety planning that need improvement, and discuss how safety planning is implemented across care settings. Special issues and adaptations for doing safety planning in individuals with SMI will be discussed.

Presenters:

• Barbara Stanley, Ph.D., Professor of Medical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University and Director of the Suicide Prevention Training, Implementation and Evaluation (SP-TIE) program in the Center for Practice Innovations at New York State Psychiatric Institute.
• Gregory K. Brown, Ph.D., Principal Investigator/Co-Investigator on research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense.