Proven suicide treatment training in the United Kingdom
Beyond prevention, suicide risk is treatable. The CAMS framework® focuses on treating ‘drivers’ that make someone want to die – because we believe that everyone deserves a life worth living!
THE UK NHS AND HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
CAMS originates from the United States where it has been approved for use by healthcare providers, veterans’ services and college students. It has also been effective within other countries’ suicide prevention work and front-line services. It has often been seen as a psychological model, which is correct as it incorporates psychological research, but it is not a risk prediction tool. Rather, with the necessary governance and procedures, CAMS can be effectively embedded into all front line services, where suicide risk is part of the presentation.
CAMS Care UK’s objective is the safe and effective training and delivery of CAMS to frontline providers, be they Psychiatrists, Liaison Psychiatry, CMHT, Crisis services, blue light providers, IAPT services, Private Counselling services, Voluntary services, as well as Psychology services.
The CAMS intervention and training programme is a model that can effectively, though not without challenges, be embedded as part of a suicide risk assessment and treatment process. It ensures the user and the clinician working collaboratively to create a risk management plan and instil hope for the user, which reduces effectively the risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts.
CAMS care UK will offer its unique and personal experience into how it creatively trained and worked with a significant cohort of frontline clinicians to embed CAMS into a whole-system suicide risk assessment and treatment process. A major component of this is the pathway whereby those identified as having risk are offered comprehensive treatment and therapy, with robust follow-up and where clinicians received consultations as well as effective supervision. The process ensured clinicians felt confident and indeed competent to work with suicide risk, and knew what to do as their expertise increased through utilising CAMS for a range of risk variables and their management.
CAMS Care UK will offer its experience on how to design effective and safe care pathways that are a bespoke fit and meet the organisation’s specific needs. This includes training each group of front line staff on how to mitigate the risk issues they encounter in their work, but also offering its customers access to the experience and impact of those who have already gone through the process. Such links with other providers in the UK allow for a network of peer support, which also informs the refinement of individual packages depending on the needs of each customer, and further tailoring the programme for your particular area.
Navigo’s Implementation of CAMS
Navigo implemented CAMS as part of their National Health Service-commissioned health and social care services in the United Kingdom, for a highly deprived ward with a population of over 165,000 people. Within 2 years of implementing, the suicide rate has dropped by 80%.
Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality
What is CAMS?
CAMS is an evidence based, suicide-focused treatment framework backed by 30 years of clinical research and 5 randomised controlled trials.
Suicide Statistics & Trends
Rates of suicide are reaching unprecedented levels, affecting lives across the world. It’s our mission to drive change through training and organisational enablement. Learn more about current suicide statistics and trends below.
Every 40 seconds someone in the world dies by suicide, yet very few clinicians are trained to work with suicidal people using evidence-based treatments.
The suicide rate in the UK has remained at around 10 per 100,000 people for the past 30 years, equating to 5,224 deaths in England and Wales in 2020; three quarters of these individuals were male
For every death by suicide, there are around 200 people that have had thoughts of suicide.
Many more people die by suicide each year than in road traffic accidents yet the funding for suicide prevention is extremely sparse in comparison to the latter.
Suicide and injury or poisoning of undetermined intent was the leading cause of death for both males and females in the 20-34 year age group for all years between 2001 and 2018.
Why CAMS-care is valuable
The CAMS framework is built on a foundation of value, with the goal of enabling individual clinicians and entire organisations to gain knowledge and experience affordably and quickly.
Evidence-based
Affordable training
Treatment for the largest population of suicidal people
Cost-effective suicide focused care
Easy to learn and quick to implement
Common language and reduced staff turnover
Implementing and using CAMS
CAMS is a therapeutic framework for suicide-specific assessment and treatment of a patient’s suicidal risk. The flexible CAMS approach makes it effective across theoretical orientations and disciplines for a wide range of suicidal patients in various treatment settings and treatment modalities.
Application of CAMS
CAMS 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.