The Alabama Youth Suicide Prevention Program (YSPP), an initiative by the Alabama Department of Public Health, is developing and implementing statewide youth suicide prevention and early intervention strategies throughout the state. The program involves multiple stakeholders from schools, educational institutions, juvenile justice systems, foster care systems, programs that address mental health and substance use, and other child and youth-supporting organizations.
The mdlogix team will work with YSPP to standardize behavioral health screening and care coordination across a variety of care settings, providing access to real-time aggregate data across all project sites. This data will help the YSPP team study trends so they can better allocate resources to vulnerable youth. YSPP has brought in partners throughout the state to provide behavioral health services to Alabama youth ages 10-24, including the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Alabama Suicide Prevention and Resource Coalition.
BH-Works has also been deployed at Alabama State University in a variety of settings, including in the counseling center, at campus wellness fairs, and through the university’s crisis response team. The transition to college can be a difficult time for students, and behavioral health issues often surface or become more severe during this period of increased stress and risk. The web-based screening tools in BH-Works will help identify students experiencing suicidal thoughts, but will also surface other behavioral health problems like depression and anxiety, connecting students to support before their issues escalate to crisis.
Learn more about the Alabama Youth Suicide Prevention Program