Participatory Development of a Suicide Prevention Program for Autism Community Organizations.
A V Kirby, K Feldman, B Duncan-Ishcomer and 11 others
The team produced a four-session suicide prevention training program for autism community organizations over three years with eight autistic partners.
It has not been tested. The 38 interviews that shaped it identified discrimination, unmet services, and emotional challenges as core drivers of suicidality.
Key findings
1The FLAPS program was developed through a three-year participatory process but has not been tested with any participants. Pilot testing is a planned future step.
2Qualitative interviews with 38 people (16 autistic adults, 8 family members, 14 mental health providers) identified three core influences on suicidality: negative societal attitudes and social experiences, negative life experiences including a lack of appropriate services, and challenging emotions. The full interview results are published separately (Kirby et al., 2025).
3The program targets autism community organizations rather than individual patients, and the team specified it should be facilitated by autistic leaders.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The program has not been tested with any participants. There are no outcome data, no pilot results, and no evidence of effectiveness. The full qualitative interview results are published in a separate paper (Kirby et al., 2025); this paper reports only the program-recommendation segments and the development process. The PC CARES model the program draws on was developed with Alaska Native partners, not the autistic community. The team adapted it but the underlying evidence base comes from a different population. The program is designed for community organizations, not for individual clinical settings, so its applicability to one-to-one therapy is untested and unspecified. The development team included a non-autistic principal investigator and non-autistic research staff alongside the eight autistic partners, so the degree to which the final program reflects autistic-led priorities versus a mixed team's consensus is not isolated.
Declared interests
Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (Award K23MH123934). The authors state the content is solely their responsibility and does not represent NIH views. No conflicts of interest were declared. The PC CARES model was developed by a separate team (Wexler et al.), and the current team received permission and guidance from those developers to use the model as a framework.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the program's evidence base or the PC CARES model's prior results as evidence that FLAPS works. The program has not been tested with any participants. The model it draws on was developed with Alaska Native communities, not the autistic community, and this paper reports only the development process, not outcomes.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →