Important research into suicide prevention is happening at a Western Kentucky university.

Grant funding is supporting a couple of projects in the Department of Psychological Sciences.

Our Laura Rogers has more from Bowling Green.

One week before they attempted suicide, for example, they got into an argument with one of their their friends.

Nathan Meredith is a graduate research assistant at WKU.

Each of these timelines, this is an individual person who has a unique story.

That story is a difficult one, as it explains the events, thoughts, and feelings that led to a suicide attempt.

The order in which they choose their cards play out their cards is really personal.

Where do we move from the thoughts to the action?

This is the card sort task for self-harm or cats, a process for adolescents and teens to have a serious discussion without having to say a word.

What are they thinking?

What are they doing?

Are they reaching out for help?

Are they receiving help?

There are more than 100 cards to help them work through all of that and exercise these researchers are using at Life Skills, a Bowling Green crisis unit.

We're trying to see if this might become something that we can use clinically, that might help us understand their own suicide attempt, and how they can then go forward and try to prevent themselves from getting back into that space.

Doctor Amy Brown, she's a professor of psychological sciences at WKU, and says while suicide rates are slightly dropping, it is still a big concern.

Kentucky is above the national average, both for all ages and for youth.

She received grant funding totaling $231,000 for both this research project and for Calm training.

An acronym for Counseling on Access to Lethal Means.

The whole goal of the Calm training is to teach clinicians on how to have those tough conversations with people about their access to lethal means when they're in a crisis.

Those lethal means primarily refer to firearms and medication.

We don't always know when someone might be suicidal or when they might make a suicide attempt.

If we can make their environment safe by securing firearms and medication so they don't have easy access to them, that's a huge part of suicide prevention.

Firearms are pretty prominent here.

A lot of people do own them and have them in their.

Home, and that can make for a difficult discussion.

A big part of it is a conversation on what the person is comfortable with.

So whether that is putting in a safe, putting it with a trusted person.

The training guides graduate students, licensed mental health professionals and others on how to have that conversation.

There would be risk factors that the clinician would notice that they would deem them kind of at risk for crisis.

The goal of both of these projects is prevention and intervention when it comes to suicide and self-harm.

We're able to identify some of these distinct warning signs between the transition from, you know, just thinking about suicide to attempting suicide.

Those are really potentially actionable targets.

While there's no one size fits all approach to these sensitive situations.

They hope to spot patterns that can lead to a deeper understanding.

Maybe there's some warning signs that could be identified to predict the transition from non suicidal self-injury to an.

Attempt, and that could lead to reducing risk and saving lives.

For Kentucky Edition I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you Laura.

After calm training, the researchers survey clinicians on how they're implementing those skills and knowledge.

They also survey youth who take part in the card support task.

Feedback that's potentially helpful for future therapies.