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Category: Project

Description: Suicide attempts and death by suicide are significant public health concerns. Recent estimates indicate that there are 25 million nonfatal suicide attempts worldwide each year, which are significant predictors of future suicide attempts and death. Furthermore, suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States (CDC 2021) and may be on the rise (CDC 2020), which has been further exaserbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the human cost of suicide attempts and death there are significant secondary societal and economic impacts estimated to reach $93.5 billion dollars per year in the United States (Shepard et al. 2016). Due to increasing rates of suicidal behaviors, barriers to treatment, and insufficient number of mental healthcare providers to treat those with suicidal behaviors in traditional therapeutic settings, there is a need for scalable mental health treatments that have the ability to reduce suicidality. Digital mental health treatments provide one avenue for scalability by lowering the barriers to treatment and reaching larger proportions of the populations, yet research is lacking on whether digital mental health interventions are associated with reductions in suicidal ideation, attempts, and death. The current study will examine associations between the Meru Health Program (MHP), a digital mental health intervention, and associated changes in suicidal ideation across the course of treatment. Furthermore, this study will determine estimated treatment associated reductions in suicide attempts and death as well as estimated economic savings by leveraging risk and economic cost estimates.