• Peter C Britton, Elizabeth Karras, Tracy Stecker, John Klein, Dev Crasta, Lisa A Brenner, and Wilfred R Pigeon.
• Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, VA Finger Lakes Healthcare System, Canandaigua, New York; Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York. Electronic address: peter.britton@va.gov.
• Am J Prev Med. 2022 May 1; 62 (5): 745-751.

IntroductionThis study evaluates the effectiveness of the Veterans Crisis Line on immediate call outcomes (i.e., caller distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency) for veterans who provide identifying information.MethodsCoders rated pre- and post-distress, suicidal ideation, and suicidal urgency for 647 calls from 2019 veteran callers. Intraclass correlation coefficients examined inter-rater reliability. Multilevel generalized linear modeling examined pre-post changes.ResultsInter-rater reliability was good for distress, excellent for suicidal ideation, and fair for urgency. Callers had 5 times greater odds of a reduction in distress (AOR=5.03, 95% CI=3.98, 6.49), almost 5 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal ideation (AOR=4.92, 95% CI=3.49, 6.94), and 11 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal urgency (AOR=11.01, 95% CI=2.72, 44.50) at the end of calls than at the beginning.ConclusionsVeterans Crisis Line callers who provide identifying information experience reductions in distress and suicidal ideation during the call. Research is needed to examine the reduction in suicidal urgency because of fair reliability, generalizability of results to other callers, post-call treatment contact and engagement, and risk for suicide attempts and death.Published by Elsevier Inc.

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