Objective The aim of this study is to assess the feasibility (uptake, retention and adherence) and acceptability of a combination of smartphone apps to deliver a digitized safety plan, BeyondNow, and personalized management strategies, BlueIce, with adolescents discharged from a mental health inpatient ward following self-harm, suicidal ideation and/or behavior. Methods Participants in this pre-post pilot study included 20 adolescents between 13–18 years, presenting with self-harming or suicidal behaviors in an inpatient psychiatric ward at a tertiary pediatric hospital. Participants were familiarized with the apps and completed baseline measures prior to discharge. They used the apps for six weeks before completing the follow-up survey, which measured feasibility and acceptability of the apps, as well as suicide resilience. Results Seventeen participants completed the pilot. Most of the sample accessed both apps at least once, three accessed the BeyondNow safety plan five times or more, and six used the BlueIce toolbox five times or more. A total of 73.5% of the sample that experienced a crisis used at least one of the apps at least once. Forty seven percent felt that the apps would not keep them safe when in crisis, although almost all of the sample rated both apps as easy to use (94% for BeyondNow, and 82% for BlueIce). Medium to large effect sizes were also found with regard to improvements in suicide resilience. Conclusion Both apps were found to be feasible and acceptable in this population, and easy to use, although no conclusions can be drawn regarding the clinical efficacy of the apps.

No abstract

Errorless academic compliance training is a graduated, noncoercive approach to treating oppositional behavior in children. In the present study, three teaching staff in a special education classroom were trained to conduct this intervention with three male students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. During baseline, staff delivered a range of academic and other classroom requests and recorded student compliance. A hierarchy of compliance probabilities was then calculated, ranging from Level 1 (requests yielding high levels of compliance) to Level 4 (those typically yielding noncompliance). At treatment initiation, teaching staff delivered high densities of Level 1 requests and provided reinforcement for compliance. Subsequent request levels were faded in over time, at a slow enough rate to ensure continued high compliance. By intervention end, all three students demonstrated substantially improved compliance to classroom requests that had commonly yielded noncompliance before intervention. Covariant improvement in on-task skills was also evident.

Purpose: A literature review was undertaken to determine (a)