An ED-based RCT of Lethal Means Counseling for Parents of At-Risk Youth
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03143283. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
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Official title
An ED-based Randomized Clinical Trial of Lethal Means Counseling for Parents of Youth at Risk for Suicide
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
The National Action Alliance to Prevent Suicide recently released a research agenda aimed at significantly reducing suicide over the next decade. Aspirational Goal 12, "Reduce access to lethal means that people use to attempt suicide," calls for identifying effective strategies to reduce a suicidal person's access to firearms and other lethal means. A promising strategy is to counsel patients seen in the emergency department (ED) for a psychiatric emergency to reduce access to firearms (the most lethal suicide method) and medications (the most common method of suicide attempt). To date, however, few studies have evaluated changes in firearm storage practices among those who received lethal means counseling (LMC), and those that have, including a pilot conducted in Colorado by the study team, have lacked control groups. Results from the pilot, which provided emergency department based LMC counseling to parents of suicidal adolescents, found that among gun-owning parents, 33% had unlocked guns at home on the day of the ED visit and none did on follow up. Using the piloted LMC protocol, we will conduct the first randomized, controlled trial (RCT) of the effectiveness of ED-based LMC on firearm and medication storage. The proposed RCT, to be conducted in five Colorado hospitals, will test whether parents of at-risk adolescents who are treated in hospitals that have (vs. have not yet) implemented our LMC protocol are more likely to store household firearms and medications safely. In addition, we will conduct in-depth, qualitative interviews with parents who have received LMC counseling to better understand those factors that affect parents' willingness and ability to make changes to firearm and medication storage. We will also conduct qualitative interviews with clinicians to understand factors affecting clinician engagement in LMC. AIM 1: To assess the effectiveness of an ED-based LMC intervention to improve how parents of pediatric patients (age 10-17) who visit the ED for a mental health emergency store household firearms and medication. AIM 2: To examine how attitudinal and contextual factors shape a) parents' decisions about firearm and medication storage following LMC, and b) clinicians' delivery of LMC messages.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT03143283
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 575 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 10 Years to 17 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Jul 31, 2017
- Primary completion
- Jul 30, 2019
- Completion
- Jul 30, 2019
- Last update posted
- Sep 9, 2020
2017 – 2019
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 8
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 5
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Penrose Hospital | Colorado Springs | Colorado | 80907 | — |
| Memorial Central | Colorado Springs | Colorado | 80909 | — |
| Memorial North | Colorado Springs | Colorado | 80920 | — |
| St. Francis Hospital | Colorado Springs | Colorado | 80923 | — |
| Poudre Valley Hospital | Fort Collins | Colorado | 80524 | — |
| Medical Center of Rockies | Loveland | Colorado | 80538 | — |
| St. Mary Corwin Medical Center | Pueblo | Colorado | 81004 | — |
| Lutheran Medical Center | Wheat Ridge | Colorado | 80033 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03143283, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Sep 9, 2020 · Synced Sep 10, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT03143283 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.