An interventional study of Treatment as usual (TAU) and FSJS in Suicide Risk and Psychiatric Disorders, sponsored by Cambridge Health Alliance. Recruiting at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 100 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-06-04.
Sponsored by Cambridge Health Alliance · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment
The proposed Center will leverage burgeoning real-time data linkage capabilities among health systems, Medicaid payors, and criminal legal (e.g., jail booking data, jail release data) systems, to identify individuals coming in and out of jail for suicide assessment and prevention, and to better coordinate care across these disparate systems. This Center will advance the fields of suicide prevention and criminal legal system-based mental health by solving a well-known, central problem in both fields: the inability to track and intervene with individuals moving in and out of both and often multiple systems. The goal is near-term reductions in the U.S. suicide rate.
1,740 studies on the registry are indexed under Mental Disorders; 348 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 1,040 is above the median of 100 across 1,301 interventional studies indexed under Mental Disorders.
Browse Mental Disorders studies →Cambridge Health Alliance is the lead sponsor of 52 studies on the registry; 10 are open to participants now.
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Treatment as Usual (TAU) arm
FSJS arm
FSJS+Navigator arm
Individuals who are brought into the Emergency Department under police supervision (excluding individuals currently incarcerated)
Exclusion Criteria
Treatment as Usual (TAU) arm
FSJS arm
FSJS+Navigator arm
Individuals who enter the Emergency Department not under police supervision
This arm will consist of 2160 eligible individuals identified to have had criminal legal involvement in Cambridge Health Alliance catchment area cities other than Cambridge (Everett, Somerville, Malden, Medford, Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop). Police departments in these Treatment as Usual cities have no programs that link police officers and clinicians to follow up on safety planning and services. These individuals will be identified as having police involvement between 2009 and 2025.
Other: Treatment as usual (TAU)
Consists of 200 Cambridge Health Alliance Patients Ages 18-100 Individuals who have come into contact with the Cambridge Police Department (as identified in the FSJS data) between 2009 and 2025.
Other: FSJS
40 patients recruited during the study period in the Cambridge Health Alliance Emergency Department (ED) Ages 18-100 Individuals who are brought into the ED under police supervision (excluding individuals currently incarcerated) involuntarily brought to the ED for psychiatric evaluation because they are considered to be a risk to themselves or others (MA Law 123(12)); or the subject of a police call for service for a mental health issue who are willingly admitted to the ED
Other: FSJS+Navigator Intervention
TAU patients will be identified using "targeted limited chart review methods" used in our prior studies, "scraping" clinical notes in the EHR for criminal legal involvement. Initial Identification terms, "police", "arrest", "court", "summons", "jail", and "crime" will be used to identify candidates for police involvement, downloading the sentence in which the keyword appeared and the sentence before and after. Next, an iterative process of editing of the search terms will be conducted to remove patients with negation of the keyword ("did not commit a crime"), and other sentence characteristics that generate false positives ("cardiac arrest"). Samples of the resulting dataset will be taken, accuracy assessed by examining the surrounding sentences, leading to further iterations and repetition of the process until a high level of accuracy is achieved.
Documentation and follow-up by the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) for all mental health-related police calls, including involuntary and voluntary Emergency Department admissions; Established partnerships with city departments, healthcare systems, clergy, courts, businesses, and mental health advocates to ensure timely engagement in mental health treatment and community-based services; Required 40 hours of officer crisis intervention training (CIT), and additional sessions on trauma- informed policing, mental health, race, and crisis negotiation; and Staffing of sworn and civilian staff including specially-trained officers designated to work with individuals living with mental illness, homelessness, and substance abuse.
The FSJS+Navigator intervention adds an Emergency Department (ED)-based Systems Navigator, a community health worker with lived experience (as family member or patient) with criminal legal and mental health systems, to the FSJS. This navigator will enhance communication between Cambridge Police Department (CPD), Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), and community agencies by being the needed "point person" within the healthcare system (the FSJS intervention only has a CPD-based social worker) to maintain communication to improve mental health services and prevent deeper legal involvement. The Navigator engages with the FSJS process in step i) of the above sequence, engaging the patient in the CHA ED and obtaining consent. The Navigator then discusses the case with the presenting CPD officer, and relays critical information about the context of the service call to ED staff. Next, the Navigator will administer the baseline CAT-MH/SS and assess additional needs (employment, housing, food).
Past-year medically treated suicide attempt at baseline and 12 months
Number of participants with a past-year medically treated suicide attempt. This will be measured at baseline and 12 months will be collected using the electronic health record (EHR) data.
Time frame: Baseline and 12 months
Suicide Severity and Behaviors using Computerized Adaptive Test Suicide Scale (CAT-SS) at Baseline and 12 Months
The CAT-SS measures Severity of Suicide Risk will be assessed using CAT-SS, providing severity on a 0-100 point scale, and risk-stratification to negligible, intermediate and high risk. It is highly sensitive and specific to the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale, and predicts future suicide events with high precision and accuracy.
Time frame: Baseline and 12 months
Number of Individual Interactions with the Criminal Legal System at Baseline and 12 Months
Number of calls about each individual to the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) Number of arrests Number of admissions to the Middlesex County Jail Repeat admission to the Middlesex County Jail
Time frame: From enrollment through 12 months
Number of Individual Interactions between Hospitals and the Criminal-Legal System at Baseline and 12 Months
Number of involuntary hospitalizations that require Cambridge Police Department (CPD) interaction
Time frame: From enrollment through 12 months
Frequency of Healthcare Services Used by Patients at Baseline and 12 Months
Number of Emergency Department visits Number of behavioral health inpatient visits Number of behavioral health outpatient mental health (MH) visits
Time frame: From enrollment through 12 months
Plan to share: No
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Started Feb 2025 (actual). Primary completion is estimated for Sep 2027, 31 months after the start.
Of 666 non-industry interventional studies with no phase under Mental Disorders, half reached primary completion within 29 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 13 and three quarters within 45. This study's planned 31 months is close to that.
Counting every sponsor, half of 680 studies reached it within 29 months; a quarter within 13 and three quarters within 45.
Mental Disorders covers many different conditions, not one, so the studies compared here vary widely. Read these figures as a rough guide.
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