About Dr. Dimeff
Linda is the 2011 recipient of the ISITDBT Cindy J. Sanderson Outstanding Educator Award. She is a standing member of the Mental Health Services Research grant review committee for the National Institute of Mental Health and is Adjunct Clinical Faculty at the University of Washington. Linda has received over 20 federal grants to facilitate the dissemination of evidence-based therapies and has published over 50 peer-reviewed publications.
On December 12, 2019, Dr. Linda Dimeff presented at the 10th Annual National Update on Behavioral Emergencies (NUBE) Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her talk was titled “Leveraging Digital Technologies, Suicide Science, Lived Experience to Super Charge ED Care of People who are Suicidal.”
She began her talk with a discussion of the current problems in care for individuals seeking help for suicide crises in their local emergency department (ED). These issues often include sitting in a waiting room for many hours to even days before seeing a provider and frequently giving up and leaving before finally seeing someone.
Jaspr Health is working to transform care to meet the needs of patients and health systems with features based on science and lived experience and that are co-designed with health system partners.
Jaspr Health is a tablet-based intervention experience for patients, which allows scalable, standardized access to four of the top evidence-based practices for suicide prevention. Jaspr and Jaz (two options for a digital assistant) introduce patients to a variety of menu options for use while in the ED, including a “Comfort and Skills” library designed to distract, de-agitate, and teach patients valuable evidence-based techniques such as distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and mindfulness. The digital agent also guides patients to a “Shared Stories” library, with messages of hope and wisdom from diverse people with lived experience of suicide crises.
An observational research study involving 82 participants was conducted. Eligible persons were those that were 18 years or older and English-speaking, in the ED because in they were in suicide crisis or had made a suicide attempt and were not actively psychotic or severely agitated. Eligible people were approached by ED personnel regarding interest in trying Jaspr while they waited. Following their informed consent, a brief baseline measure of distress and agitation was done. The participant engaged with Jaspr for a maximum of 2 hours, and then was asked to complete a post-survey questionnaire.
The study found a 25% reduction in distress level and 34% reduction in agitation level between the initial baseline assessment and post-Jaspr use with 0 adverse events. 100% of participants reported that they would recommend Jaspr Health to others, 94% wanted to access content once they were home from the ED.
In January, the company will begin a rigorous RCT comparing care-as-usual to care-as-usual plus Jaspr in EDs at two healthcare systems in the mid-west. Outcomes to be measured include suicide attempts, length of stay, disposition, readmission, chemical/physical restraints, ED satisfaction, distress, hopefulness, coping skills, and number of best practices delivered.
To learn more, visit https://jasprhealth.com/.
Press Contact
Marcus Kako
marcus.kako@jasprhealth.com
707-637-6797
