Culturally-Infused Evidence-based Community Helper Trainings: Be Sensitive, Be Brave for Suicide Prevention

Body of Abstract: BACKGROUND
There is an urgent need to provide culturally responsive suicide prevention trainings for culturally diverse communities to move towards greater behavioral health equity as stated in the new 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Suicide prevention and mental health community trainings offer a powerful opportunity to empower individuals with protective skills to strengthen safety within their own communities. Community trainings are a primary method of suicide prevention that aims to grow a network of community members to act as eyes and ears for mental health and suicidal distress and help connect distressed individuals with appropriate services. However, there is a need to provide community trainings that have culturally responsive components infused throughout the curricula.

Existing community trainings are often standardized with the hopes of being generalizable across a broad range of participants. However, these trainings have lacked dedicated attention to the integration of culturally responsive content throughout their curricula. Most disseminated community suicide prevention and mental health trainings have encouraged the use of culture-specific modules to be added on top of the primary training components, as opposed to creating curricula with cultural concepts infused throughout the training.

DESCRIPTION
The evidence-based Be Sensitive, Be Brave for Suicide Prevention (BSBB for SP) and BSBB for Mental Health (BSBB for MH) community helper trainings are infused with diversity and culture throughout their curricula. The BSBB trainings were developed based on evidence-based guidelines for general and cultural standard training components (i.e., the Culturally Infused Curricular Framework (CICF) for Suicide Prevention trainings; Chiu, Corpus, Lien, & Chu, 2024; Liwag, Bong, & Chu, in preparation). BSBB has been well-received across community groups such as youth, veterans, Chinese, Latine/o/a, Pacific Islander, Black or African American, Filipino/a/x, LGBTQ+, and other culturally diverse communities. Both BSBB trainings are 2 hours in length to maximize accessibility and feasibility for underserved community participants. Qualitative data has shown positive feedback, changes in skills, and understanding of how culture should be considered in suicide prevention and mental health psychoeducation, and quantitative data has shown pre- to post-training improvement in major suicide prevention and mental health competencies, and in preparing participants to help people from culturally diverse communities.

The BSBB training curricula are foundationally culturally inclusive, and can be used as a prevention tool to educate, empower and protect community members by connecting them to appropriate suicide prevention and mental health resources and support, facilitating important conversations, and teaching community members protective outreach and support skills. More information about the trainings can be found at http://www.besensitivebebrave.com. A BSBB Trainers Academy is available for community trainers who aim to become certified BSBB trainers.

THE “BE SENSITIVE, BE BRAVE FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION” WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
“Be Sensitive, Be Brave: Suicide Prevention” (2 hrs) infuses culture and diversity throughout a foundational workshop in suicide prevention. The workshop teaches community members to act as eyes and ears for suicidal distress and to help connect individuals with appropriate services. Participants will learn to recognize suicide risk, how to ask individuals if they are thinking about suicide, and connect them with help. This workshop discusses navigating conversations about suicide across diverse populations, with the aim of equipping community members to be culturally responsive within their communities