What is the CSRP?
The Center for Suicide Research and Prevention (CSRP) is a multidisciplinary, practice-based center aimed at advancing and implementing innovative new suicide prevention research.
It will support the development, deployment, and evaluation of practice-ready and clinically-focused interventions aimed at improving the identification and effective treatment of patients at risk of suicide.
This is a collaborative effort between researchers, clinicians, and stakeholders at the Mass General Brigham and Harvard University.
Why research suicide?
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and the 10th leading cause of death in the United States (CDC). A major barrier to suicide prevention has been that cutting-edge scientific advances in the past few decades have not been translated and implemented for use by clinicians working on the front lines of this mental health care crisis.
A focus of the Center is to improve the identification and prevention of suicide-related behaviors among patients presenting for treatment at emergency departments (EDs) and psychiatric inpatient settings. Decades of research have shown that:
- 50% of people who die by suicide are seen in a healthcare setting within one month before their death.
- 40% visit an ED the year before their death.
- The suicide rate is highest in the weeks immediately following discharge from a psychiatric inpatient setting.
The CSRP is interested in implementing the best prediction and prevention methods in ED and inpatient settings to decrease the risk of suicidal behavior for these at-risk populations. All approaches used in the Center have been developed collaboratively with frontline clinicians and leverage digital and highly scalable technologies.
Our Vision
Our vision is to lead the creation and broad dissemination of approaches generalizable to a diverse range of clinicians and patients, significantly advancing suicide prediction and prevention.
The CSRP has 3 main aims:
- Build & maintain a cohesive and innovative multidisciplinary Center dedicated to advancing suicide prevention. Drawing on a community of unparalleled depth and breadth in research and clinical excellence, the Center brings together established and early career scientists, cultivates emerging scholars, develops novel methods, engages stakeholders, and builds community partnerships to strengthen the implementation and sustainability of these efforts. The interdisciplinary community includes clinicians, implementation scientists, data scientists, and other stakeholders focused on improving the prediction and prevention of suicide.
- Conduct practice-focused research projects that target prediction and prevention of suicide-related behavior (SRB) in acute care settings. Research projects focus on improved prediction and prevention in EDs and inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. Each project leverages foundational research to create a learning health system.
- Share, educate, and implement findings with clinicians working with patients at risk for suicide. The Center disseminates the findings from our research to the broad scientific community and helps others implement and test the innovative approaches we develop.
Support Our Research
- Please reach out to our affiliates at the Center for Precision Psychiatry (CPP), if you are interested in contributing to similar research.
