The association between suicide screening practices and attempts requiring emergency care in juvenile justice facilities

Objective: To provide a national description of suicide screening practices in juvenile residential facilities and to examine their association with whether facilities experience a suicide attempt. Method: Multivariate modeling with data from the 2000 Juvenile Residential Facility Census (n=3690 facilities). Results: Controlling for facility characteristics, screening the entire facility population within the first 24 hours after arrival is significantly linked to lower odds of serious suicide attempts (odds ratio 0.23-0.65). Facilities screening just some of their population in a 2- to 7-day window after arrival exhibited significantly higher odds of serious suicide attempts (odds ratio 1.30-4.73). Conclusions: Results suggest that facility-level risks of serious suicide attempts may be reduced by screening every child and adolescent entering a juvenile justice facility within the 24-hour window directly following arrival, regardless of the facility size and whether the youths came directly from another facility within the system.