TY - JOUR
T1 - Strengths-Based Assessment for Suicide Prevention
T2 - Reasons for Life as a Protective Factor From Yup’ik Alaska Native Youth Suicide
AU - and the Qungasvik Team
AU - Allen, James
AU - Rasmus, Stacy M.
AU - Fok, Carlotta Ching Ting
AU - Charles, Billy
AU - Trimble, Joseph
AU - Lee, Kyung Sook
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2021/4
Y1 - 2021/4
N2 - Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native youth, and within the Alaska Native youth subpopulation, the leading cause of death. In response to this public health crisis, American Indian and Alaska Native communities have created strategies to protect their young people by building resilience using localized Indigenous well-being frameworks and cultural strengths. These approaches to suicide prevention emphasize promotion of protective factors over risk reduction. A measure of culturally based protective factors from suicide risk has potential to assess outcomes from these strengths-based, culturally grounded suicide prevention efforts, and can potentially address several substantive concerns regarding direct assessment of suicide risk. We report on the Reasons for Life (RFL) scale, a measure of protective factors from suicide, testing psychometric properties including internal structure with 302 rural Alaska Native Yup’ik youth. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed the RFL is best described through three distinct first-order factors organized under one higher second-order factor. Item response theory analyses identified 11 satisfactorily functioning items. The RFL correlates with other measures of more general protective factors. Implications of these findings are described, including generalizability to other American Indian and Alaska Native, other Indigenous, and other culturally distinct suicide disparities groups.
AB - Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native youth, and within the Alaska Native youth subpopulation, the leading cause of death. In response to this public health crisis, American Indian and Alaska Native communities have created strategies to protect their young people by building resilience using localized Indigenous well-being frameworks and cultural strengths. These approaches to suicide prevention emphasize promotion of protective factors over risk reduction. A measure of culturally based protective factors from suicide risk has potential to assess outcomes from these strengths-based, culturally grounded suicide prevention efforts, and can potentially address several substantive concerns regarding direct assessment of suicide risk. We report on the Reasons for Life (RFL) scale, a measure of protective factors from suicide, testing psychometric properties including internal structure with 302 rural Alaska Native Yup’ik youth. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed the RFL is best described through three distinct first-order factors organized under one higher second-order factor. Item response theory analyses identified 11 satisfactorily functioning items. The RFL correlates with other measures of more general protective factors. Implications of these findings are described, including generalizability to other American Indian and Alaska Native, other Indigenous, and other culturally distinct suicide disparities groups.
KW - American Indian and Alaska Native
KW - protective factors
KW - suicide assessment
KW - suicide prevention
KW - suicide prevention outcomes assessment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074048231&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/1073191119875789
DO - 10.1177/1073191119875789
M3 - Article
C2 - 31538813
AN - SCOPUS:85074048231
SN - 1073-1911
VL - 28
SP - 709
EP - 723
JO - Assessment
JF - Assessment
IS - 3
ER -