Youth Mentor-Led Brief Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Youth Suicide Prevention - Over the past decade, youth reports of poor mental health, sadness, hopelessness, and suicide ideation have significantly increased. Suicide ideation is a risk factor for suicide attempts and death by suicide. Key risk factors include depression symptoms, low sense of belonging, and feeling like a burden. Structural factors, such as limited access to care and mistrust of the mental health system, exacerbate these risks. Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents (IPT-A; 12-16 sessions) is an effective, evidence-based intervention that improves interpersonal functioning, reduces depressive symptoms, and decreases suicide ideation. Brief IPT-A (BIPT-A; 6-8 sessions), integrated into community settings and delivered by lay providers (task-shifting), offers a promising upstream approach to suicide prevention and closing the youth mental health access gap. However, research is needed to examine the feasibility and acceptability of BIPT-A when task-shifted to youth community centers, where youth are. This K23 proposal outlines a comprehensive career development plan to enable the candidate to become an independent clinical investigator with expertise in implementation science and a recognized leader in community capacity-building for youth suicide prevention. The training goals are to: 1) Develop expertise in systematically adapting interventions, 2) Gain expertise in task-shifting for suicide prevention, and 3) Acquire skills in conducting pragmatic, randomized trials to test implementation strategies and youth suicide ideation mechanisms of change. Leveraging partnerships with three youth community centers, the proposed study aims to: (1) Adapt BIPT-A for use by lay providers (youth mentors) in community centers to decrease depression symptoms, increase belongingness, and reduce burdensomeness among youth with subthreshold depression (Aim 1). (2) Train youth mentors in the adapted BIPT-A (Aim 2). (3) Conduct a pilot pragmatic randomized trial to test the feasibility, acceptability, and mechanisms of change of BIPT-A task-shifted to youth mentors (Aim 3). This K23 addresses NIMH's strategic plan by investigating the adaptation and implementation of an evidence-based mental health intervention in real-world settings for youth populations, aiming to prevent suicide, enhance community capacity, and increase access to evidence-based interventions.
