Kerrville, TX – Schreiner University’s Assistant Professor of Psychology and Research Coordinator for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), Dr. Tiffany Culver, will host Safe Alternatives for Teens and Youths (SAFETY): A Suicide Prevention Approach for Youths and Families presented by Dr. Jennifer L. Hughes on Thursday, Sept 15, at 6 p.m. This free virtual event is open to the public. Register for the virtual event at: https://stxseptemberresearch.attendease.com/.

Jennifer L. Hughes, PhD, MPH, is a Psychologist and Clinical Scholar in Behavioral Health at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, College of Medicine, and the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion, College of Public Health, at The Ohio State University. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the UT Southwestern Center for Depression Research and Clinical Care, supporting the CDRC Risk and Resilience Network, which includes partnerships with local schools and youth community organizations to implement mental health promotion, resilience and suicide prevention programs, and the Texas Youth Depression and Suicide Research Network, an initiative of the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium.

Hughes received her Ph.D. from UT Southwestern Medical Center and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is a co-developer of two evidence-based treatments, one for relapse prevention of depression in children and adolescents and one utilizing family-based CBT for suicidal youth and their parents. Hughes is the recipient of a Young Investigator Grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to adapt and test an intervention designed to prevent future suicide attempts in adolescents. Most recently, her work has focused on the dissemination and implementation of a school-based mental health promotion and suicide prevention program called Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM). She is an international trainer for YAM, working with the intervention developers to disseminate this program in the United States, Australia and India. Hughes is a past Chair (2017-2018) of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) Child and Adolescent Depression Special Interest Group (SIG) and has served as the Newsletter Editor (2017-2021) and as the APA Convention Program Chair (2013-2015) for the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 53, Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.

The SAFETY intervention was developed as a treatment for adolescents with recent suicide attempts. Originally intended as an expanded emergency mental health intervention to be delivered in the aftermath of a suicide attempt, the SAFETY intervention is a novel, individually tailored treatment focused on preventing repeat suicidal behavior. SAFETY is a time-limited intervention approach based on a social ecological cognitive-behavioral model of behavior change which aims to reduce suicide attempt risk by targeting risk and protective factors in the environment, individual and person by environment interactions. The development, implementation and outcomes of the SAFETY intervention will be presented.

Learn more at afsp.org/research.