Cross cultural mental health assessment tool

The Suicidal Mind Mapping Project (SMMP) by Charles Sturt’s Dr Keith Harris aims to improve understanding of suicidality, the affective, behavioural, and cognitive aspects of being suicidal. The goals include developing improved suicide risk assessments through state-of-the-science measurement, and localising risk assessments through free culture instruments and knowledge sharing.

Successes include the development of the ‘free culture’ Suicidality Scale (assessing key universal suicidal symptoms) in English and Chinese, with additional studies in Spanish and Thai.

The Suicidality Scale (SS) is an administered measure of current suicidality. It has been tested in community and clinical settings (where it can be used as self-report or clinician-administered). The SS was developed to meet the clinical and research needs for more accurate assessments of current suicidality and risk of future suicidal behaviours.