Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESMultisystemic Therapy Effects on Attempted Suicide by Youths Presenting Psychiatric Emergencies
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 156 youths who were approved for emergency psychiatric hospitalization at the Medical University of South Carolina because of suicidal ideation/planning or attempted suicide, homicidal ideation or behavior, psychosis, or other threat of harm to self or others. Youths were included if they were (1) aged 10 to 17, (2) Medicaid-funded or without health insurance, and (3) residing in a noninstitutional environment such as the home of a family member or relative, foster home, or
Outcomes
Table 1 presents the percentage of youths who were suicide attempters or ideators before treatment, after treatment, and at the 1-year follow-up for both the MST and hospital conditions. Also included are means and standard deviations for continuous variables, as well as significance tests for time and treatment effects. Significant linear time effects were found for caregiver- and youth-rated attempted suicide, youth-rated suicidal ideation, caregiver-rated anxious/depressed, youth-rated
DISCUSSION
This report presents the first examination of MST for suicidal behavior in children and adolescents. Importantly, the results support the efficacy of MST relative to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization in reducing the frequency of attempted suicide. In addition, analysis of quadratic effects suggests that MST may contribute to more rapid symptom relief compared to hospitalization. Although several clinical trials with suicidal youths have been conducted (Harrington et al., 1998;
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The research reported in this article was supported by NIMH grants R01MH51852 and R01MH51852 , and AHRQ grant PO1 HS1087 . Special thanks go to Sonja Schoenwald for her comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.
Disclosure: Drs. Henggeler and Rowland are stockholders in MST Services Inc., which has the exclusive licensing agreement through the Medical University of South Carolina for the dissemination of MST technology and intellectual property.