Keeping Myself Safe – Juan Pablo Zapata, Ph.D. – IMPACT Institute, Affiliate Faculty

Over the past year, my team and I have been working closely with trans and gender-diverse youth to adapt a single-session mental health tool for young people experiencing suicidal thoughts or behaviors. The core safety-planning approach has been tested across several trials, but this version was built specifically with, and for trans and nonbinary youth.

We’re now officially recruiting for the study and would love to connect with people that already show up for LGBTQ+ youth every day, spaces that young people know and trust. If the program continues to show benefit, our goal is for it to be freely available and easy for community groups to share. All tools from our lab are, and will remain, free; expanding access is central to our mission. To date, our interventions have reached more than 100,000 youth worldwide.

Juan Pablo Zapata, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Social Sciences
IMPACT Institute, Affiliate Faculty 
Associate Director, Lab for Scalable Mental Health
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine  
625 N Michigan Ave, 21^st Floor, Chicago, IL 60611