Trial Outcomes & Findings for Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Military Populations (NCT NCT02038075)

Participants were identified during weekly behavioral health treatment team meetings and daily emergency department reports. All soldiers admitted to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization for suicidal ideation or for a suicide attempt from January 2011 to September 2012 were referred upon discharge for determination of eligibility.

30 of 206 referred Soldiers were excluded (15 due to planned move in next 6 months, 15 refused). 24 of 176 consenting to participate were excluded (22 ineligible, 2 dropped before randomization).

Brief Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Military Populations

The SASII is a clinician-administered interview designed to assess the factors involved in nonfatal suicide attempts and intentional self-injury. The SASII assesses variables related to method, reliability, lethality, impulsivity, likelihood of rescue, suicidal intent, consequences, and habitual self-injury. Interrater reliabilities for each item range from .87-.98, with the correlation for rater classification of behavior (i.e., suicide attempt or non-suicidal self-injury) being .92. The SASII demonstrates very high agreement in identifying and classifying suicide-related events when compared to clinician therapy notes, patient diary cards, and medical records (for events requiring medical attention).

The SSI is a 21-item, interviewer-administered scale used to evaluate the current intensity of the patient's specific attitudes, behaviors, and plans to commit suicide. The SSI has moderately high internal consistency and good concurrent and discriminant validity for psychiatric outpatients. Inter-rater reliability has been found to be higher than .98, with good evidence of predictive validity.

The BDI-II is a 21-item self-report instrument developed to measure severity of depression in adults and adolescents. Each of the items consists of four statements reflecting increasing levels of severity for a particular symptom of depression.

The BHS consists of 20 true-false statements designed to assess the extent of positive and negative beliefs about the future.

The BAI is a 21-item scale that measures the severity of anxiety in adults and adolescents.

The SCID (patient version with psychotic screen) is a diagnostic instrument based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Axis I disorders.

The SIS is a 15-item, interviewer-administered assessment of the intensity of an individual's intent to die at the time of a suicide attempt. It assesses verbal and nonverbal indicators of suicidal attempt including objective circumstances surrounding the attempt, and the attempters' perceptions of the attempt.

The INQ is a 10-item self-report questionnaire that measures current beliefs about the extent to which the respondent feels connected to others (i.e., thwarted belongingness), and the extent to which he or she feels like a burden on the people in their lives (i.e., perceived burdensomeness).

The SCS-R is an 18-item self-report measure that measures two aspects of suicide-specific hopelessness: 1) unlovability (which measures more trait-like aspects of hopelessness), and 2) unbearability (which measures more state-like aspects of hopelessness).

Frequency, intensity, and location of each patient's accessing of medical services will be assessed via medical record review.