Open AccessCulturally grounded stress reduction and suicide prevention for African American adolescents.
Author(s) -
W. LaVome Robinson,
Mary H. Case,
Christopher R. Whipple,
Adia Gooden,
Roberto López-Tamayo,
Sharon F. Lambert,
Leonard A. Jason
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
practice innovations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2377-8903
pISSN - 2377-889X
DOI - 10.1037/pri0000020
Subject(s) - african american , suicide prevention , intervention (counseling) , clinical psychology , coping (psychology) , psychology , poison control , injury prevention , medicine , psychiatry , environmental health , ethnology , history
Suicide is an often-overlooked manifestation of violence among African American youth that has become more prevalent in the last two decades. This article reports on the process used to culturally adapt a cognitive-behavioral coping with stress prevention intervention for African American adolescents. We implemented this adapted school-based suicide prevention intervention with 758 African American 9 th, 10 th and 11 th grade students at four high schools in a large Midwestern city. The findings presented are preliminary. The adolescents in this sample endorsed high levels of suicide risk, with females endorsing significantly more suicide risk than males. Those receiving the prevention intervention evidenced an 86% relative suicide risk reduction, compared to the standard care control participants. The presented model of adaptation and resulting culturally-grounded suicide prevention intervention significantly reduced suicide risk among African American adolescents. Clinical, research and policy implications are discussed.