The Core Competency Model for Military (CCM-M): A suicide prevention training approach for working with military populations

Suicide remains a pressing problem for the United States military. Recent federal efforts espoused best suicide prevention clinical guidelines and policy-focused recommendations to address military suicide. The present study is a response to multiple areas of these calls, namely reducing stigma and enhancing use of clinical best practices through training mental health providers (MHPs) serving military service members. We piloted the Core Competency Model–Military Version (CCM-M), a half-day, social-cognitively based training workshop. A sample (N = 35) of MHPs opted in to the training to receive continuing education credits. They further responded to in-person pre/post training evaluation surveys. Pre/post training analyses showed that CCM-M training yielded significant improvement in suicide prevention knowledge (large effect), perceived skill mastery (large effect), and empathic beliefs (small effect). Training participation was also associated with significant reductions in stigmatizing suicide attitudes (small effect) and unacceptability beliefs (small effect). MHPs demonstrated more accurate risk determinations post-training and correctly identified a number of empirically supported risk and protective factors. This CCM-M training pilot is limited by the single-group design and small pilot sample. We offer recommendations for further CCM-M evaluation and implementation within veteran-serving and MHP training contexts.