A Prioritized Research Agenda for Suicide Prevention: An Action Plan to Save Lives

The Prioritized Research Agenda  is a first-of-its-kind, public-private partnership to prioritize research and focus efforts on areas that are most likely to save lives.   This agenda fulfills Goal 12.1 of the updated National Strategy for Suicide Prevention:  to develop a national suicide prevention research agenda with input from multiple stakeholders.   The stated goal of the Research Agenda is to reduce suicides by 20 percent in five years and 40 percent in the next ten, if all Aspirational Goals were fully implemented.  Markov and other statistical models were used to illustrate how such a reduction could theoretically be achieved.  Some models estimated the number of suicidal individuals who could be helped, if their needs were detected in “boundaried” settings, such as health care and education, with the effect of an intervention examined in terms of attempts and suicide deaths prevented.  Two NIMH RFAs have already been issued that are consistent with recommendations which focus on how to better assess and refer individuals at most risk in emergency care settings.   These complement concurrent research solicitations by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA].    The prioritized research agenda also identifies multiple community and early prevention efforts.  In combining these many approaches, the pathways defined by the Research Agenda show the way to further reductions in suicide deaths. 

Consistent with the approach used by the NRAP, the Research Agenda calls for making wiser investments in funded research.  This includes the prioritized support for studies that use common data elements and also allow for broader  data banking and sharing.  Additional cross-cutting research recommendations that will be of interest to prevention scientists include:  the use of more efficient designs to test universal changes in environment safety; practical intervention designs that examine improved education of providers (teachers, clinicians)  and evidence-based programs and clinical care in real world settings;  the testing of approaches that initiate and maintain health and  behaviors protective against suicide;  adding measures of suicidal behavior to ongoing prevention studies; and testing how to effectively improve adoption, fidelity of implementation, and sustainability of effective suicide prevention programs.