NAMI: Ask the Expert: Suicide in Pretrial Detention and Expanding the Crisis Care Continuum OD046

Course overview

This course, based on the Ask the Expert webinar series by NAMI, reviews suicide risk in pretrial detention and explains why the earliest detention interval is a time-sensitive window for identification, stabilization, and diversion to treatment. The training synthesizes epidemiologic and systems-level considerations, including how jail environments can amplify trauma, fear, shame, and clinical destabilization, and why suicide prevention requires coordinated action beyond in-custody clinical services alone. It then extends crisis-system planning by examining how the crisis care continuum can be redesigned to function through the "jailhouse door," aligning justice decision points with access to appropriate levels of community-based care. Interprofessional coordination among legal stakeholders, peer support, and behavioral health partners is emphasized to reduce suicide risk and improve safety and health outcomes during pretrial adjudication. The course, with an intended audience of social workers, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and counselors, supports ethical and evidence-informed crisis response and care coordination for justice-involved individuals at elevated suicide risk, integrating clinical considerations with real-world systems and decision-making contexts.