The Counseling On Access To Lethal Means (CALM) Gatekeeper Training Improves Confidence In Suicide Prevention Techniques Among A Sample Of Academic Advisors

Suicide is a persistent public health problem in the United States. Currently, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death among the general US population. Efforts to address the suicide problem have been implemented, however, there is ample skepticism about the effectiveness of these programs because suicide rates have steadily increased since 1999. Consequently, there has been a recent shift towards using models that promote the concept of means safety. The Counseling on Access to Lethal Means (CALM) Model is a lethal means reduction model. In the current study, a gatekeeper version of the CALM training was given to a group of 16 academic advisors on the campus of Appalachian State University. Confidence in implementation of suicide prevention (SP) and means reduction (MR) was assessed pre-training, post-training, and after a 4 to 6 week follow-up. Results suggested that there was a significant increase in confidence levels among MR practices from baseline to post-training. There was also an increase in MR confidence level averages from post-training to follow-up, however, this increase was not significant. These results are suggestive of CALM training effects among MR practices and it might indicate that CALM should be integrated into a larger, more comprehensive SP training.