Increase Help Seeking

By teaching people to recognize when they need support—and helping them to find it—you can enable them to reduce their suicide risk. Self-help tools and outreach campaigns are examples of ways to lower an individual’s barriers to obtaining help, such as not knowing what services exist or believing that help won’t be effective.
Other interventions might address the social and structural environment by, for example, fostering peer norms that support help-seeking or making services more convenient and culturally appropriate.

Provider actions

Use a collaborative approach to gather information and increase engagement.
Consider the use of a telepsychiatry-based culturally sensitive collaborative treatment model & Cultural formulation interview model to engage diverse and underserved populations.
Consider men specific needs in regards to mental health.
Openly address the stigma associated with seeking mental health care to reduce barriers that may prevent seeking care.
Use the RESPECT Mnemonic to reinforce culturally responsive attitudes and behaviors.

Physicians with inadequate cultural sensitivity may overlook depression among populations such as Asian Americans where of these individuals are unfamiliar with the concept of major depression, have language barriers, and schedule physician visits only if they have physical symptoms.
When depression is diagnosed, many Chinese Americans avoid mental health services because of their culture’s strong stigma against psychiatric disorders. To overcome these cultural barriers, the Engagement Interview Protocol (EIP), a culturally sensitive assessment, can be used to explore patients’ illness beliefs, their understanding of the illness, and what they hope to achieve from treatment. This information is particularly useful for engaging minority populations.

Partner with faith-based organizations, and community centers to hold town halls with the community and provide care in community settings.

Similarly, another model to consider is The Friendship Bench- model of care developed in Zimbabwe by Dr. Chibonda Dixon to train grandmothers to deliver Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to the community under the supervision of therapists.

For individuals at risk of suicide, primary and behavioral health care settings provide unique opportunities to connect with the health care system and access effective treatment. Suicide Safe is a free mobile app that helps providers integrate suicide prevention strategies into their practice and address suicide risk among their patients. The Suicide Safe app is based on SAMHSA's Suicide Assessment Five-Step Evaluation and Triage (SAFE-T) card.

Highly interactive, individually tailored applications empower MyStrength users to address depression, anxiety, stress, substance use, chronic pain, and sleep challenges, while also supporting the physical and spiritual aspects of whole-person health.

For individuals with opioid use disorder, reSET-O® is the only FDA-authorized prescription digital therapeutic that is proven to help patients stay in treatment longer using evidence-based approaches, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Fluency Training and Contingency Management.
It works in a way that meets patients where they already are, on their smartphones, so they can turn screen time into therapy time.
Patients prescribed reSET-O download it to their phone for secure, discreet, convenient access to therapy, interactive learning, and support.

Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment is a comprehensive, integrated, public health approach for early identification and intervention with patients whose patterns of alcohol and/or drug use put their health at risk.
Screening quickly assesses the severity of substance use and identifies the appropriate level of treatment.
Brief intervention focuses on increasing insight and awareness regarding substance use and motivation toward behavioral change.
Referral to treatment provides those identified as needing more extensive treatment with access to specialty care.