VA Office of Research and Development
Firearm suicide prevention is a leading VA priority. To date, no intervention has been shown to encourage Veterans with elevated suicide risk to adopt secure firearm storage practices to reduce their suicide risk. The proposed effort will test whether the SecureHomes intervention can encourage Veterans with elevated suicide risk to adopt secure firearm storage practices, such as voluntarily removing firearms from their households or securing them with locking devices.
The VA Clinical Practice Guidelines encourage clinicians to facilitate secure firearm storage for at-risk Veterans. No such intervention has ever been tested in a clinical trial among Veterans. SecureHomes is an intervention which was found to be feasible and highly acceptable to Veterans. The aim of this trial is to determine the efficacy of the SecureHomes intervention compared to an attention control condition among 400 Veteran firearm owners with elevated suicide risk. Hypothesis 1a: Veterans who receive SecureHomes will be significantly more likely to report meaningful reductions in fire…
Inclusion Criteria: 1. Firearms on premises (assessed via Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center Lethal Means Safety measure) 2. Owns at least one of the firearms on premises (assessed via Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center Lethal Means Safety measure) 3. Has ACCESS to at least one of the firearms on premises (definition below, via Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center Lethal Means Safety measure) 4. Recent VHA ED/UC, PC, OMH encounter who screen positive on the C-SSRS Screener (definition below) - (determined via recruitment database)…
A virtually delivered lethal means safety intervention that aims to increase awareness of the link between firearm access and suicide risk and to encourage secure firearm storage. It uses a firearm-specific motivational interviewing approach developed by the study team. It encourages meaningful reduction in firearm access (MRIA) for all participants, and locking all firearms for those not ready to adopt MRIA. Based on participant preference, the study team ships educational print materials and no-cost locking devices (lockboxes and cable locks) to participants' homes.
An attention control condition matched to SecureHomes in session length and follow-up. Sessions promote healthy and stress-reducing behaviors and contain no firearm-storage knowledge, motivation, or resources.
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