Michigan Dept. of Health and Human Services

Michigan consistently has higher rates of suicide among youth and young adults than the nation as a whole. Building on the foundational work done in the state with previous Garrett Lee Smith youth suicide prevention and early intervention funding, the TYSP-Mi2 Program is designed to impact rates of youth/young adult suicide by state level and local systems changes that embed suicide prevention as a core priority for health and human services agencies.

The purpose of the TYSP-Mi2 program is to develop, implement, and support a comprehensive, sustainable statewide approach to youth suicide prevention and intervention that is grounded in public/private collaboration among youth serving agencies and organizations. There are five program goals:

• Goal 1: Generate state-level systems change that advances and sustains youth and young adult suicide prevention as a core priority in statewide systems and ensures that these systems employ best practices for suicide prevention.
• Goal 2: Develop urban and rural “Youth Suicide Prevention (YSP) Model Communities” as replicable prototypes that move beyond community awareness to implementation of sustainable best practice approaches that span the continuum of suicide prevention and intervention.
• Goal 3: Ensure a well-educated cadre of gatekeepers and clinical service providers within Michigan’s youth serving workforce that consistently uses evidence-based approaches for suicide prevention.
• Goal 4: Support local community development across the state around youth suicide prevention.
• Goal 5: Develop a comprehensive statewide surveillance system for non-lethal suicide behaviors and deaths by suicide in order to characterize youth and young adult suicide in Michigan, identify risk factors and potential points of early intervention, track trends over time, ascertain potential clusters, and contribute to the evaluation of program impacts.

Populations of focus include foster care youth, child protective services involved youth, and clients of Child and Adolescent Health clinics, all of whom are known to have multiple risk factors for suicide. Child Welfare and clinic staff will be trained as gatekeepers using safeTALK, ASIST and AMSR will be offered across the state to help strengthen the network of persons able and willing to help a youth/young adult in crisis. The program will also work intensively with at least two communities to develop state specific replicable urban and rural models that demonstrate how to do systems change work to create suicide safe communities with “no wrong door” for youth/young adults at risk of suicide. The TYSP-Mi2 program proposes to serve over 2,000 persons/year and almost 13,000 over the life of the grant. Government and non-governmental work groups will advise the program and each other about what systems change work needs to be done across the state at all levels to assure a “Suicide-Safe Michigan” for youth and young adults.