Mental health follow-up and treatment engagement following suicide risk screening in the Veterans Health Administration

IMPORTANCE: Understanding the extent to which population-level suicide risk screening facilities follow-up and engagement in mental health treatment is important as engaging at-risk individuals in treatment is critical to reducing suicidal behaviors. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate mental health follow-up and treatment engagement in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) following administration of the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) screen, a component of the VHA’s universal suicide risk screening program. DESIGN: This cross-sectional study used data from VA’s Corporate Data Warehouse. SETTINGS: 140 VHA Medical Centers. PARTICIPANTS: Patients who completed the C-SSRS screen in ambulatory care between October 1, 2018—September 30, 2020. EXPOSURE: Standardized suicide risk screening. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Mental health follow-up (one or more visits within 30 days of C-SSRS screening) and treatment engagement (two or more visits within 90 days of C-SSRS screening) were examined. RESULTS: 97,224 Veterans in Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19) (mean age 51.4 years; 86.8% male; 64.8% white, 22.4% African-American) and 58,693 Veterans in FY20 (mean age 49.6 years; 85.5% male; 63.4% white, 21.9% African-American) received the C-SSRS screen. Across FYs, a positive C-SSRS screen was associated with increased probability of mental health follow-up and treatment engagement. Patients who were not seen in mental health in the year prior to screening had the greatest increase in probability of mental health follow-up and engagement following a positive screen (P<0.001). For FY19, a positive C-SSRS screen in non-mental health connected patients was associated with an increased probability of follow-up from 49.8% to 79.5% (relative risk = 1.60) and engagement from 39.5% to 63.6% (relative risk = 1.61). For mental health-connected patients, a positive C-SSRS screen was associated with a smaller increase in probability of follow-up from 75.8% to 87.6% (relative risk = 1.16) and engagement from 63.3% to 76.4% (relative risk = 1.21). Results for FY20 were similar. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Identification of suicide risk through population-level screening was associated with increased mental health follow-up and engagement, particularly for non-mental health connected patients. Findings support the use of a standardized, comprehensive suicide risk screening program for managing elevated suicide risk in a large healthcare system.