title: Measuring Associations of the Department of Veterans Affairs' Suicide Prevention Campaign on the Use of Crisis Support Services.
abstract: Campaigns have become popular in public health approaches to suicide prevention; however, limited empirical investigation of their impact on behavior has been conducted. To address this gap, utilization patterns of crisis support services associated with the Department of Veterans Affairs' Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) suicide prevention campaign were examined. Daily call data for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, VCL, and 1-800-SUICIDE were modeled using a novel semi-varying coefficient method. Analyses reveal significant increases in call volume to both targeted and broad resources during the campaign. Findings underscore the need for further research to refine measurement of the effects of these suicide prevention efforts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Veterans Affairs, Rocky Mountain MIRECC for Suicide Prevention, Denver, CO, USA.|Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Karras
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Naiji
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematics and Statistics, Central China Normal University, China.
authors.forename: Guoxin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zuo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.|Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA.|VISN 2 Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canandaigua, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Xin M
authors.initials: XM
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.affiliation: VISN 2 Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canandaigua, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Brady
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Stephens
authors.affiliation: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Link2Health Solutions, Inc., New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Draper
authors.affiliation: Suicide Prevention and Community Engagement Program, Mental Health Services, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Caitlin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.affiliation: Epidemiology Program, Post-Deployment Health in the Office of Public Health, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA.|Department of Epidemiology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Bossarte
mesh_terms: D015277:Hotlines / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D012944:Social Support; D014481:United States; D014493:United States Department of Veterans Affairs; D014728:Veterans / Q000523:psychology*; D000092864:Suicide Prevention