Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS)

What is CAMS?

CAMS is an evidence-based suicide-specific assessment and treatment of a client’s suicidal risk designed for clinical mental health providers only (if you are a peer support professional, please do not register).The CAMS Framework is first and foremost a clinical philosophy of care. It is a therapeutic framework for suicide-specific assessment and treatment of a patient’s suicidal risk. It is a flexible approach that can be used across theoretical orientations and disciplines for a wide range of suicidal patients across treatment settings and different treatment modalities.

The clinician and patient engage in a highly interactive assessment process and the patient is actively involved in the development of their own treatment plan. Every session of CAMS intentionally utilizes the patient’s input about what is and is not working. All assessment work in CAMS is collaborative; we seek to have the patient be a “co-author” of their own treatment plan.

Who Should Complete This Training?

To be eligible for the training, you MUST be an Indiana clinical mental health provider who offers individual therapy in private, inpatient, emergency department, outpatient programs, and/or other mental health settings providing individual therapeutical services.

Please note that the training has two separate components, an online self-paced 3-hour course, as well as a 1-day virtual role-play training. Participants must complete both the self-paced course and the virtual role-play training to become CAMS trained.

This training made possible by the Garrett Lee Smith State Youth Suicide Prevention Grant, A Focus in Community, State & Peer Collaboration: Striving to Achieve Zero Suicides in Indiana. For more information about this grant program, please contact MHAI Training Institute at [email protected] or Michelle Bulington at [email protected].