Suicide is a leading cause of death for youth in the Unites States, and youth who have experienced trauma are particularly vulnerable to experiencing suicidality. Minoritized youth, in terms of race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and gender identity, are at higher risk of experiencing both trauma and suicidality but are unlikely to access outpatient mental health services. This is likely, at least in part, due to their heightened exposure to socio-ecological stressors associated with structural inequality that exacerbate psychological distress and make it challenging to access outpatient treatment. Therefore, inpatient psychiatric units are a front line setting for these vulnerable youth to receive services following suicidality. However, trauma exposure and related symptoms are seldom assessed within inpatient psychiatric care. This represents a significant missed opportunity to improve the clinical outcomes of minoritized youths.

Our study will address this gap by developing an efficacious model of trauma screening and risk for inpatient youths with suicidality. We propose to complete a retrospective chart review of youth (age 18 and under) hospitalized within the UCLA Resnick NPH Child and Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatric Unit during the last 5 years. The retrospective chart reviews will begin on the patient’s discharge date and go backwards in the chart. Data will be collected from the chart regarding the patient’s overall mental health, well-being, and hospital course. We propose to pull both structured (e.g. diagnostic codes) and unstructured (e.g. H&P Notes) EHR data from charts. We also propose to geocode the data into census tracts, in service of analyze neighborhood-level influences on the mental health of the subjects.