Convening Lived Experience & Research Communities to Improve Patient-Centered Outcomes

Each year in the US, over 47,000 people die by suicide. Over 1.4 million people attempt to end their lives each year and live. Each suicide death leaves behind approximately 135 people who are left to wonder how the person they knew could have been saved and similar numbers of people live with people who have been suicidal and lived but are at risk of dying by suicide. The suicide rate has increased over the last two decades and evidence-based treatments to decrease suicide have not been adopted across health care settings. In addition, there is a profound lack of engagement in health care research by people with lived experience of suicide-- those who have lived with thoughts of suicide, attempted suicide or lived through the loss of someone close to them. For example, there is no PCOR project that specifically engages people with lived experience of suicide. This contributes to a gap in determining how to meaningfully engage people with lived experience in the development and dissemination of treatments that work and could save lives and improve the lives of people living after a suicide attempt. This project will give people with lived experience of suicide a voice in creating better research tools. It entails a partnership between University of Kentucky, suicide attempt survivors who have been engaged in crisis work, advocacy and research and The American Association of Suicidology (AAS). This will be accomplished via a convening in which people with lived experience, researchers, clinicians and the leading voices in advocacy and funding for suicide research are all involved. This convening will examine how to integrate lived experience of suicide into suicide research especially as it applies to CER. It will entail user designed research and community participatory research in which people with lived experience of suicide are full partners with suicide researchers.