Maternal Suicide

Suicide Prevention Resources

• The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has resources to assist with setting and communicating policy priorities on suicide prevention, as well as infographics to share.
• Read about CDC’s suicide prevention strategic plan, grounded in data, science, action, and collaboration.
• Explore CDC’s Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policies, Programs, and Practices for strategies and approaches with the best available evidence to prevent suicide.
• Read the first ever Federal Action Plan which identifies more than 200 actions across the Federal government to be taken in support of the NSSP’s goals.
• The Zero Suicide Toolkit: a detailed guide to Zero Suicide implementation and strategy.
• The Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS): a flexible therapeutic framework in which patient and provider work together to assess the patient’s suicidal risk and use that information to plan and manage suicide-specific, “driver-oriented” treatment. It is a philosophy of clinical care that can be used for a wide range of suicidal patients across outpatient and inpatient treatment settings and in the context of various psychotherapies and treatment modalities.
• Care Transitions Outpatient Health Care Self-Assessment from National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.
• The Outpatient Self-Assessment is a checklist designed to help outpatient behavioral health care systems assess their policies, procedures, and practices as they compare to the Best Practices in Care Transitions for Individuals with Suicide Risk: Inpatient Care to Outpatient Care. The results of the self-assessment will help outpatient health care systems identify opportunities to improve administrative practices and clinical care.
• Outpatient Care Transitions Action Planning template from National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. The Outpatient Action Planning template was developed to translate the results of the self-assessment into action steps that will incrementally improve their overall care transitions and patient care practices.
• Suicide Safety Plan: A safety plan app that allows you to customize your own warning signs that a crisis may be developing, coping strategies for dealing with suicidal urges, places for distraction, friends and family members you can reach out to, professionals you can call, methods of making your environment safe, and your own important reasons for living.

Why Screen for Maternal Suicide Risk?

Screening Tools

Several suicide screening tools exist; the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) is robust in assessing for ideation and risk.

The (C-SSRS) is a tool that can be used in many settings, including, community settings, medical, inpatient, and outpatient behavioral health.

The C-SSRS assesses the full range of evidence-based ideation and behavior. It can be used as an initial screener or as part of a full assessment.

Those who administer the screening for maternal mental health disorders may wish to use the C-SSRS if a person verbally discloses suicidal thoughts or answers “yes” to question 9 on the PHQ-9 or question 10 on the EPDS, for example.

Additionally, the SAFE-T Suicide Assessment Five-Step Evaluation and Triage may be utilized to understand both access to potential deadly tools and protective factors.

Download the C-SSRS or combined C-SSRS & SAFE-T tools here:

Guide on Suicide and Serious Mental Illness

People who live with serious mental illness (SMI)—such as major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia—are at increased risk of suicide. It is critical to understand the problem of suicide for those who have SMI. That is the only way to create a comprehensive, effective suicide prevention plan.

SMI Adviser and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) are proud to present a new guide on Suicide and Serious Mental Illness. It is an ideal resource for both suicide prevention coordinators and mental health clinicians.