Blueprint for Developing your own Caring Contacts Service
Caring Contacts are brief, periodic messages sent over 1-2 years that express unconditional care and concern. They have reduced suicide, suicide attempts, and suicide ideation, are cost-effective, are recommended by multiple clinical practice guidelines, and have the potential to scale up to a single individual intervening with hundreds of suicidal individuals. However, despite this strong support, few health systems are using Caring Contacts and many who have made maladaptive adaptations that weaken core Caring Contacts principles. These maladaptive modifications occur largely because Caring Contacts activities fall outside of established workflows. Intervention administration can also be too time consuming for clinic staff or service organizations for whom valuable clinical and volunteer time should be spent with people, not paperwork. Thus, many organizations express excitement about Caring Contacts, but implementation falters in the face of what can appear to be insurmountable coordination and risk management complexities.
Getting Started
