Answering the Alarm: Preventing Black Youth Suicide

Photo of a young Black male student walking down stairs

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded NYU Silver and NYU Steinhardt a five-year, $5.8 million R01 research grant to implement and study the effectiveness of a system of care for Black youth that combines suicide risk screening with an intervention to help connect at-risk youth to quality mental health services. The study will be implemented at the emergency departments of Harlem Hospital and Kings County Hospital in New York City.

NYU Silver Dean Michael A. Lindsey, Pamela A. Morris-Perez of NYU Steinhardt’s ARCADIA for Suicide Prevention, and Cheryl A. King of the University of Michigan Youth Depression and Suicide Prevention Program, are principal investigators of the project, based at the McSilver Institute and NYU’s Institute of Human Development and Social Change (IHDSC). The urgent need for an effective suicide risk detection, treatment, and prevention strategy for Black youth that was highlighted in “Ring the Alarm: the Crisis of Black Youth Suicide in America,” a 2019 report released by the Congressional Black Caucus’s Emergency Taskforce on Black Youth Suicide and Mental Health. Dr. Lindsey led the working group of experts that supported the task force’s work.

Read more about this project at the NYU Silver School of Social Work.