Expert Leadership

Standards, Training and Practices Subcommittee Members

The role of the Standards, Training and Practices Subcommittee is to identify and recommend essential, minimum standards for network member center credentialing and quality service as well as accompanying best practices trainings and program evaluation to support the maintenance of these recommended standards. This subcommittee will submit their recommendations to both the Lifeline's leadership and the Lifeline Steering Committee.

Thomas Joiner (joiner@psy.fsu.edu)
Chair of the Subcommittee

Dr. Joiner is Distinguished Research Professor & The Bright-Burton Professor and director of the University Psychology Clinic, Department of Psychology at Florida State University. Dr. Joiner's work is on the psychology, neurobiology, and treatment of suicidal behavior and related conditions. Author of more than 375 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Joiner was recently awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. He was elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association and received the Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Shakow Award for Early Career Achievement from the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association, the Shneidman Award for excellence in suicide research from the American Association of Suicidology, and the Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions from the American Psychological Association. He also has received research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and various foundations. He is editor of APA's Clinician's Research Digest and of the Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology. He has published 14 books, including Why People Die By Suicide (2005, Harvard University Press).

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Jennifer Battle (Jennifer.Battle@mhmraharris.org)

Jennifer is currently the Director of the Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority (MHMRA) of Harris County HelpLine, the largest public mental health hotline in Texas. The MHMRA HelpLine also serves as the crisis line for 38 additional Texas counties. She has an MSW from the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and a certification in Non Profit Management through the American Humanics Program at University of Houston. Jennifer was the Director of Development at Crisis Intervention of Houston and the Director of Volunteer Services at Bay Area Women's Center previous to her work at MHMRA. She is on the Board for the National Association of Crisis Center Directors (NSACOD) and teaches the Managing Human Services Organizations course at the Graduate College of Social Work at University of Houston and a Fund Development 101 course for the American Humanics Program.

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Glenn Currier (glenn_currier@urmc.rochester.edu)

Glenn Currier is Director of the Center for Disaster Medicine and Mass Casualty Management and is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Emergency Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York, USA. He received his medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a Master's degree in Public Health from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale University, where he specialized in health services research. Dr. Currier's residency training in psychiatry and internal medicine was also at Yale. Before coming to Rochester in 1999, he was Director of Emergency and Consultation Psychiatry at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Dr. Currier is past president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry. He is also a member of the Committee on Emergency Services of the American Psychiatric Association and the behavioral treatment committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians. He is author or co-author of a number of publications, focused primarily on health services research and treatment of the mentally ill in emergency settings.

Dr. Currier is the P.I. on an NIMH funded K-23 career development award. This project is a randomized controlled clinical trial of a services intervention to link discharged emergency department patients into ongoing ambulatory care through the use of a mobile crisis team. The project is designed to assure safe and effective community-based care of suicidal patients and also to curtail overuse of emergency departments for sub-acute mental health problems. Part of this project involves implementing community-wide data surveillance of medical and mental health service use after ED discharge.

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Mary Drexler (maryd@ccpg.org)

In April, 2008, Mary accepted the position as CONTACT USA's part-time Executive Director. CONTACT USA has over 40 accredited crisis centers and is currently working towards strengthening their accreditation process for the centers they serve. In this role, Mary also hopes to increase collaborative efforts with other national entities who serve the crisis center community. Mary is also currently the Assistant Director of the CT Council on Problem Gambling. For the previous 11 years, Mary served as the Vice President of the 2-1-1 Information and Referral (I&R) and Crisis Center, a statewide program of United Way of Connecticut. She has been in the social services field since 1979, with several years of experience in nonprofit management. She continues to do private consultation and training with I&R's and crisis centers. She served three years as Crisis Division Chair on the Council of Delegates for the American Association of Suicidology. Mary's additional goal is to pursue further research in the area of problem gambling and suicide. She holds a Masters of Social Work from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work.

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Gina Eckart (Gina.Eckart@fssa.IN.gov)

Gina Eckart is the Assistant Director for the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction. Prior to working for the State of Indiana she was employed for 12 years at Midtown Community Mental Health Center in Indianapolis. During this time she held positions that included work as a crisis clinician and manager for crisis services provided in a 24/7 crisis unit and psychiatric emergency room located within Wishard Memorial Hospital. Ms. Eckart is a Nationally Certified Counselor and a Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Current and past professional activities have also included serving on the Advisory Board for the Mental Health Association in Marion County's Crisis and Suicide Line, training in disaster mental health response (NOVA and CISM) with participation on state and local teams, as well as participation on the Marion County Suicide Prevention Task Force. Ms. Eckart is also an active member of the Marion County Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Steering Committee and provides training in mental health and crisis intervention for law enforcement officers both in CIT programs and for all new recruits at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

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Kristy Evans (kristyvoh@3rivers.net)

Kristy Evans is the Executive Director for Voices of Hope. Kristy began her venture with Voices of Hope in January, 2005. Kristy has over 10 years experience in suicide prevention, crisis intervention and sexual assault advocacy. She was formerly with the City County Health Department where she worked as a Health Educator doing tobacco prevention, HIV/AIDS education and Healthy Community projects. She has been trained as a facilitator for the A.S.I.S.T workshop. She has done several A.S.I.S.T trainings throughout the state of Montana including 3 trainings for Montana tribal entities. Kristy has been collaborating with many of the tribal communities in Montana. She has been working on developing collaborative efforts over the past 3 years with all seven of the reservations to provide a quality cultural-based suicide hotline service for American Indians. Kristy serves on the following boards: Local Advisory Council for Mental Health, Montana Suicide Task Force, Family Violence Council, Gateway Community Center for Addictions, and North Montana Wrestling Club. Kristy has a bachelor degree in Psychology and Interpersonal Communications. Kristy is also, working on her Masters Degree in Public Communications.

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Madelyn Gould, Ph.D. (GOULDM@childpsych.columbia.edu)

Dr. Gould is a Professor in Child Psychiatry and Public Health (Epidemiology) at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her long-standing research interests include the epidemiology of youth suicide, as well as the evaluation of youth suicide prevention interventions. Dr. Gould has received numerous federally funded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIMH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for studies examining risk factors for teenage suicide, various aspects of cluster suicides, the impact of the media on suicide, the effect of a peer's suicide on fellow students, suicide postvention programs in schools, the effect of youth suicide screening programs, the utility of telephone crisis services for teenagers, and has received grants funded from the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to evaluate crisis hotline outcomes for adults.

She also received a W.T. Grant Faculty Scholar's Award to examine psychosocial risk factors for teenage suicide and a Distinguished Investigator Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to investigate the role of the media in the initiation of suicide clusters. Her participation in numerous state and national government commissions include the 1978 President's Commission on Mental Health and the Secretary of Health and Human Services' Task Force on Youth Suicide in 1989. In addition, she authored the chapter on youth suicide prevention for the Surgeon General's 1999 National Suicide Prevention Strategy, and served as a leadership consultant for the Surgeon General's Leadership Working Group for the National Suicide Prevention Strategy. Dr. Gould was also a founding member of the New York State Suicide Prevention Council and has been actively engaged in the development of the suicide prevention plan for New York State. She contributed to the Center for Disease Control's community response plan for suicide clusters (1988) and recommendations to optimize media reporting of suicide (1994), and was a member of an international workgroup, sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which updated these media recommendations in 2001. The recipient of the Shneidman Award for Research from the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) in 1991, the New York State Office of Mental Health Research Award in 2002, and the 2006 American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Research Award, Dr. Gould has a strong commitment to applying her research to program and policy development.

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Judith Harrington (judithharrington@att.net)

Dr. Harrington has served as Coordinator for the Alabama Suicide Prevention Task Force and teaches a 3-credit hour graduate course on Suicide Prevention, Intervention and Postvention at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has spent 25 years in affiliation with the Crisis Center of central Alabama, as Clinical Director, Bereavement Coordinator and SOS Group Facilitator (10 years), Board Member, and consultant. She has trained several hundred volunteers there in addition to training hundreds of other mental health counselors both as an active adjunct professor teaching Theories, DSM, Clinical Supervision, Group Counseling, Introduction to Counseling, Assessment, Community Mental Health, Skills and Techniques in Counseling, Societal and Multicultural Issues in Counseling, etc., and she has specialized in counselor training and development by presenting extensively to mental health professionals upon request and at their professional associations, and widely on the subject of suicide intervention skills for clinicians. She is an approved trainer for AAS/SPRC, and has co-edited a book, Critical Incidents in Clinical Supervision (American Counseling Association, 2008).

In addition to serving as a suicide prevention advocate in her state, she was honored with her state counseling association's highest honor as the Wilbur Tincher Caring and Humanitarian Person of the Year (2002), the inaugural honor as Outstanding Practitioner of the Year (2006), and by the American Mental Health Counselors Association as Mental Health Counselor of the Year (2007). She has served often in elected and appointed office, including as President of the Alabama Mental Health Counselors Association and President of the Alabama Association of Counselor Education and Supervision. Prior to serving as a psychotherapist in her private practice which she has done from 1988 to present, she worked in college counseling and student development departments at St. Mary of the Woods College, SpringHill College, and Birmingham Southern College.

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Marshall Knudson (mlk@alachuacounty.us)

Dr. Knudson has been the director of the Alachua County Crisis Center (Gainesville, FL) for the last 20 years and has worked in the field of crisis and suicide intervention for more than 25 years. He holds the positions of adjunct faculty in the University of Florida's departments of psychology and counselor education and affiliate staff in the University's Counseling Center. Dr. Knudson is a licensed psychologist and has been active on the local, State, and national level as a speaker, consultant, trainer, and interventionist in the areas of suicide, crisis, and community trauma response. He is also recognized for his work in the field of crisis center issues, including such topics as the use of volunteers and paraprofessionals, related training models, and the expanded role of crisis centers in their communities. Dr. Knudson is a senior certification examiner and a member of the certification committee with the American Association of Suicidology. This year, Marshall was also appointed by the Governor to the newly formed Florida Suicide Prevention Council.

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Bill Lang (billworks@livingworks.net)

Bill has thirty-five years of experience as an educator, twenty-five years as a therapist and twenty-seven years in suicide prevention. Until his recent retirement after twenty-five years of service, he was Head of Counseling for the Banff Centre of Fine Arts-one of the most important arts conservatories in the world. For twenty-seven years he has been a Vice-President of LivingWorks Education and Head of Development. He has had a major role in the development and ongoing refinement of the LivingWorks suite of awareness and training programs: suicideTALK, safeTALK, ASIST, suicideCare and Working Together. Prior to his focusing solely on development, he had conducted hundreds of ASIST workshops and taught thousands of trainers of ASIST.

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Christy Letsom (cletsom@theplanningcouncil.org)

Ms. Letsom has worked with The Crisis Line, an AAS Certified, 24-hour crisis hotline, for seventeen years. Ms. Letsom has served as the Program Coordinator for more than nine years. Ms. Letsom is a founding member and the current Chair of the Virginia Suicide Prevention Coalition. This group was instrumental in helping Virginia create both its Youth and Lifespan suicide prevention legislation. She is also the author of the Virginia Suicide Prevention Coalition blog, linking stakeholders throughout Virginia. As an auxiliary staff person with 211 Virginia, she is a Certified Information and Referral Specialist and is also an AAS Certified Crisis Worker. Ms. Letsom is a QPR, Second Step (violence prevention program) and Safe TALK trainer. She serves on the Inter-Agency Advisory Committee for Youth Suicide Prevention to the Virginia Department of Health and on the Youth Violence CDC Advisory Group for the Virginia Department of Health. Ms. Letsom has served on the organizing committee for the AFSP Out of the Darkness Community Walks for the past three years. Ms. Letsom is a Master Trainer with LivingWorks Education. Ms. Letsom is a consultant and coach for new ASIST trainers. Ms. Letsom believes in the power of hotlines to make life altering change in individuals' lives.

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Lesley Levin (Llevin@bhrworldwide.org)

Ms. Levin is president of Behavioral Health Response (BHR), a not-for-profit, private corporation that provides 24/7 mental health crisis call center services to the residents of St. Louis and seven surrounding Missouri counties. The call center handles more than 15,000 calls a month. Ms. Levin has more than 35 years of experience in the medical, mental health, and substance abuse fields. Prior to joining BHR, Ms. Levin worked for Personal Performance Consultants (PPC), an international employee assistance program. Her responsibilities at PPC included the management of the 24/7 call center that handled all of the EAP and managed care calls. When Medco Behavioral Care (one of the Nation's largest managed behavioral care firms) purchased PPC, Ms. Levin became a vice president for Medco's National Account Administration. Today, Medco is Magellan Behavioral Care.

Ms. Levin has been a Commission for Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) surveyor since 1999 and an AAS surveyor since 2000. Missouri Governor Matt Blount appointed Ms. Levin to his Suicide Prevention Advisory Committee. She has had both inpatient and outpatient psychiatric and substance abuse treatment experience, including serving as a hospital social work director and the director of an inpatient substance abuse program. She has also been a guest on the Phil Donahue Show and the Today Show.

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Gary McConahay (gmcconahay@columbiacare.org)

Dr. McConahay has 29 of years continuous experience in suicide prevention. Starting as a crisis line volunteer, Dr. McConahay eventually became the executive director of a suicide prevention agency. He has worked as a mobile crisis clinician and has supervised crisis teams and outpatient treatment teams. Dr. McConahay has personally intervened with more than 5,000 people at elevated risk of suicide, including at least 1,000 people in hospital emergency rooms, jails, and other public facilities. Dr. McConahay has been active in training others in suicide intervention skills and has been part of the suicide prevention efforts of Oregon, California, Washington, Tennessee, Virginia, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the nations of Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland. He actively assisted in the development of the State of Oregon youth and elder suicide prevention plans and currently serves on the Technical Advisory Workgroup for the DHS Health Services "Connecting Youth" project.

Currently, Dr. McConahay is the clinical director of ColumbiaCare Services, Inc. and the Director of the Center for Suicide Prevention at ColumbiaCare Services a nonprofit organization providing a broad range of services for persons with mental illnesses. He also contracts and consults with government and nonprofit agencies on suicide prevention and community mental health, and is a senior coaching trainer of the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) workshop. Dr. McConahay supports suicide survivors on a pro bono basis and operates a private practice in Grants Pass, OR.

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Brian Mishara (mishara.brian@uqam.ca)

Brian is professor of psychology and Director of the Centre for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia (CRISE) at the University of Quebec at Montreal. His publications, including six books in English and five in French in the areas of suicidology and gerontology, include research on the effectiveness of suicide prevention programs, studies of how children develop an understanding of suicide, theories of the development of suicidality, ethical issues in research, euthanasia and "assisted suicide," and evaluations of helpline effectiveness. Besides his university activities, Professor Mishara was a founder of Suicide Action Montreal, the Montreal regional suicide prevention centre and the Quebec Association of Suicidology. He is vice president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and a past president of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. He was the recipient of the 1994-1995 Bora Laskin Canadian National Fellowship on Human Rights Research for his work on human rights issues regarding the involvement of physicians and family members in assisted suicide and euthanasia.

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Richard Ramsay (richard.ramsay@livingworks.net)

Richard Ramsay is professor emeritus of social work at the University of Calgary. He was with the Faculty of Social Work from 1975 until his retirement in 2004. Richard has received many recognitions including appointment in 1994 to the Mahalaxmi Temple Trust Golden Jubilee Chair in Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbia. He received the Alberta Injury Control and Research Centre's John H. Read Award in 1999 for his long involvement in suicide prevention, and the Andrew Mouravieff-Apostol Medal from the International Federation of Social Workers in 2006 for his contributions to international social work.

Richard was a long serving president of the Alberta Association of Social Workers and part of a six-country IFSW committee that created the first internationally approved classification of social work for the International Labor Organization. Richard was an elected leader of IFSW and served as its treasurer for 3 consecutive terms. He has been Canada's representative on the joint International Federation of Social Workers - International Association of Schools of Social Work committee on Global Standards for Education and Practice. His board and community service work includes appointments to address street prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, social enterprise EAP and development of distress line services.

Prevention of suicide has been a career long volunteer and professional focus. He is a co-founder of LivingWorks Education (Canada and the United States) and a co-developer of its suicide prevention programs, along with colleagues, Bryan Tanney, Roger Tierney, Bill Lang and Tarie Kinzel. Together they pioneered the use of social R&D methods in the development, dissemination and standardization of suicide intervention training. LivingWorks has earned several export achievement awards and exemplary program recognitions, highlighted in 2002 with the receipt of Canada's Social Policy Research Knowledge Broker Award.

In 1991 the United Nations invited Richard and his colleagues and several interregional experts to prepare a UN guideline to help countries develop national suicide prevention strategies. The guide was a substantial support to the founders of SPANUSA and their grassroots use of its citizen-initiated process that led to the collaborative development and implementation of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy in the United States.

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Shawn Shea (sheainte@worldpath.net)

Dr. Shea is recognized nationally as a prominent leader in suicide prevention and clinical interviewing. He founded and is the Director of the Training Institute for Suicide Assessment and Clinical Interviewing, a training and consultation service providing workshops, consultations, and quality assurance design in mental health assessments for both mental health professionals and primary care clinicians. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Dartmouth School of Medicine and in private practice.

Dr. Shea is recognized nationally as a prominent leader in suicide prevention and clinical interviewing. He founded and is the Director of the Training Institute for Suicide Assessment and Clinical Interviewing, a training and consultation service providing workshops, consultations, and quality assurance design in mental health assessments for both mental health professionals and primary care clinicians. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Dartmouth School of Medicine and in private practice.

Dr. Shea is the author of Psychiatric Interviewing: The Art of Understanding, 2nd Edition. In their first years of publication, both the first and second editions were honored by being chosen by the Medical Library Association for the Brandon/Hill List as one of the 16 most important books in the field of psychiatry. His next book The Practical Art of Suicide Assessment by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., first published in 1999 and more recently released as an expanded paperback in 2002, is considered a modern classic in the field of suicidology. In November of 2004, he published his first book for the general public, the best selling Happiness Is, subtitled Unexpected Answers to Practical Questions in Curious Times.

Dr. Shea created and is featured on the innovative learning module, "Suicide Assessment for Primary Care Physicians" on the CD-ROM produced by GlaxoSmithKline entitled, The Hidden Diagnosis: Uncovering Anxiety & Depressive Disorders. He also created the full-length DVD Transforming Angry Resistance: From Theory to Practice in which one of his most popular workshops was captured live by the cameras and production team of the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical corporation.

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Kathryn VanBoskirk, M.S.W. (kathrynvanboskirk@esedona.net)

Kathryn VanBoskirk MSW is a licensed clinical social worker with over 30 years experience as a therapist, advocate, and educator including extensive work in Community Mental Health centers, EAP programs, schools, hospice, and suicide prevention. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work in a program targeted on ethnic sensitive social work practice and specialized in providing training in culterally competent practice. Her extensive clinical work in urban and rural settings with disenfrancised and minority clients has formed the foundation for her depth of knowledge and skill in providing training. She is a minister and Rosen Method Bodyworker with a healing practice in her home town of Sedona, Arizona. She also is a consultant for Living Works Education training trainers in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) in the United States and internationally. She was instrumental in setting up a national network of suicide prevention trainers in both Norway and Australia. She is responsible for providing on-going quality control and technical support to an international network on suicide prevention consultant trainers. She is a member of the Arizona Suicide Prevention Coalition and has provided training on reservations for tribes in Arizona. She is also a member of the Standards, Training, and Practices subcommitte of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the American Association of Suicidology.

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