Welcome
This page, which is under construction, brings together OpenGate tools, protocols, trainings, and other trusted resources to support you in responding to crisis and high-risk clinical situations. You’ll find resources related to suicide and self-harm, violence risk, domestic violence, psychosis and mania, mandated reporting, vulnerable adults, and other safety concerns. Use the links below to jump directly to the section you need.
Suicidality, Self-Harm and Homicidality
Quick Help
CLIENT AT RISK RIGHT NOW?
1. Assess. Determine the nature, severity, immediacy, and context of the risk.
2. Consult. Contact your OpenGate clinical supervisor when risk is significant, uncertain, escalating, or outside your current level of competence.
3. Collaborate. When clinically appropriate, develop or update a safety plan and address access to lethal means.
4. Determine the appropriate level of care. Outpatient safety planning and monitoring, crisis evaluation/mobile crisis, emergency department, or emergency response are not interchangeable. Match the response to the clinical situation.
5. Document. Document what you assessed, relevant risk and protective factors, consultation obtained, your clinical reasoning, interventions taken, client response, disposition, and follow-up plan.
6. Follow through. High-risk care does not end when the session ends. Make sure the client actually gets connected to the next level of care and establish the follow-up plan.
Suicidality, self-harm & Homicidality
Forms and Tools
Policies and Protocols
We use collaborative safety planning, not “no-suicide contracts” or “contracts for safety.”Zero Suicide notes that there is no evidence that safety contracts are effective and that they may create false reassurance for clinicians.
Screening ≠ Assessment. A suicide screen identifies possible suicide risk and tells us when further evaluation is warranted. A clinical risk assessment evaluates the client’s specific presentation and informs the clinician’s intervention, safety planning, consultation, treatment, and disposition.
When in doubt, consult.
You are not expected to manage significant clinical risk alone. Contact your OpenGate clinical supervisor when risk is elevated, the appropriate intervention is unclear, a client refuses recommended care, you are considering emergency intervention, or you simply have the feeling that something about the situation is not sitting right.
Following Up- 72 hours!
Books, Videos and Podcasts
Managing Suicidal Risk: A Collaborative Approach — David A. Jobes
This is the foundational CAMS text and is part of CAMS training.
Stanley-Brown Safety Planning Videos & Materials
The VA resource collection includes clinical manuals, quick guides, safety-planning resources and videos.
Safety Planning Clinical Resources
SPRC Clinical Webinars & Media
Rather than selecting random YouTube material, I’d send clinicians to SPRC’s vetted clinical collection. It includes material on motivational interviewing in suicide assessment, CBT for suicidal behavior, telehealth and suicide risk, postvention after a client suicide, and evidence-based suicide-specific interventions.
SPRC Clinical Practice Library
Suicide & Suicide Prevention TED Talks
Kevin Briggs — “The Bridge Between Suicide and Life” | TED
This would be one of my top picks for the Hub. Briggs spent years as a California Highway Patrol officer talking with people contemplating suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge. It is fundamentally about listening, connection, and what happens in the actual moment of suicidal crisis. About 14 minutes.
Watch: The Bridge Between Suicide and Life
Ullakarin Nyberg — “How to Talk About Suicide” | TEDx
Nyberg is a psychiatrist and suicide researcher. This is more clinically grounded than many suicide TEDx talks and gives concrete examples of how to speak directly about suicide rather than avoiding the subject.
Watch: How to Talk About Suicide
Jeremy Forbes — “How to Start a Conversation About Suicide” | TED
Less clinical, more human. Very good for developing comfort with initiating difficult conversations and understanding the power of connection.
Watch: How to Start a Conversation About Suicide
Erica Lennon — “I Saw Myself as Deadly: Healing After Loss by Suicide” | TEDx
This one jumped out at me specifically for OpenGate. Lennon is a psychologist who lost a client to suicide and talks about the shame, grief, and recovery that followed. That’s a subject clinicians desperately need discussed during training, and it would fit beautifully with a future OpenGate postvention protocol.
Watch: I Saw Myself as Deadly
TED also maintains an entire curated suicide collection, so I’d put this at the bottom as “Explore More.”
TED: Let’s End the Silence Around Suicide
Self-Harm / Nonsuicidal Self-Injury
The Psychology of Self-Injury: Exploring Self-Harm & Mental Health — Dr. Nicholas Westers
This is a whole podcast devoted to NSSI, hosted by Nicholas Westers, PsyD, ABPP, a clinical psychologist and professor at UT Southwestern, in collaboration with the International Society for the Study of Self-Injury. He interviews researchers, clinicians, people with lived experience, and family members. Topics include disclosure, functions of NSSI, treatment, suicide risk, adolescents, social media, stigma, and how clinicians should respond.
The Psychology of Self-Injury Podcast
Homicide / Violence Risk
APA Speaking of Psychology — “Dispelling the Myth of Violence and Mental Illness,” with Joel Dvoskin, PhD
Dvoskin is a clinical and forensic psychologist specializing in violence risk assessment. The episode tackles a really important misconception: mental illness itself is not a useful shorthand for dangerousness. He talks about violence prediction, risk assessment, circumstances under which violence becomes more likely, and—critically—the fact that assessment matters because of what we do with the information, not because we can perfectly predict human behavior.
APA: Dispelling the Myth of Violence and Mental Illness
Domestic Violence / Intimate Partner Violence TED Talks
Leslie Morgan Steiner — “Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave” | TED
Steiner describes her own abusive marriage and dismantles the question clinicians sometimes implicitly ask: Why doesn’t she just leave? It’s had millions of views and remains an extraordinarily effective introduction to coercion and the lived experience of IPV.
Watch: Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave
Esta Soler — “How We Turned the Tide on Domestic Violence” | TED
This gives clinicians the larger historical/social context of domestic violence intervention and how the field changed its response to IPV. TED includes it alongside Steiner’s talk in its abuse collection.
TED: Let’s End the Silence Around Abuse
I would also include the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s professional resource library rather than relying entirely on talks. It covers power and control, warning signs, stalking, strangulation, financial abuse, digital abuse, sexual coercion, threats, suicide and abuse, and other topics.
National Domestic Violence Hotline — Identify Abuse Resources
Training
CAMS — Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality
Highly Recommended for clinicians regularly treating suicidal clients
CAMS is a suicide-specific clinical framework in which clinician and client collaboratively assess and treat the factors driving the client’s suicidality. It is not simply a risk-assessment course; it teaches an ongoing therapeutic approach to suicidal risk.
The current CAMS Trained pathway includes foundational coursework, the Managing Suicidal Risk book, interactive role-play training, and consultation calls. Advanced options include CAMS-4Teens, CAMS Brief Intervention, and other specialized training.
OpenGate recommendation: I would probably designate this as your advanced/strongly recommended suicide-treatment training, particularly for clinicians carrying clients with chronic or recurrent suicidality.
CALM — Counseling on Access to Lethal Means
Recommended for all OpenGate clinicians
CALM is a free online course teaching clinicians how to identify clients who may benefit from lethal-means counseling, ask about access to lethal methods, and collaboratively work with clients and families to reduce access during periods of increased risk.
CALM — Counseling on Access to Lethal Means
This is one I would seriously consider making expected training for every OpenGate supervisee, rather than just putting it on the resource shelf. It’s free, clinically practical, and fills an important gap between “I assessed firearm/medication access” and “now how do I actually have this conversation?”
C-SSRS Training
The Columbia Lighthouse Project provides free training options, including a brief online training. Formal training isn’t required for ordinary clinical use, but the project recommends it.
Stanley-Brown Safety Planning Intervention Training
I would definitely add actual SPI training, because completing the form and knowing how to do safety planning well are different skills. The VA describes SPI as a clinical intervention, not merely completion of a document.
Stanley-Brown Safety Planning Training & Resources
Resources
Suicide Hotline 988
Warmline 833-888-2557 (833) VT-TALKS
Psychosis & Mania
Tools and Resources
coming soon
Policies and Protocols
coming soon
Books, Videos, and Podcasts
Psychosis
Elyn Saks — “A Tale of Mental Illness — From the Inside” | TED
Saks is a USC law professor and mental-health-law scholar who lives with schizophrenia. She describes psychosis from inside the experience, including delusions, disorganized thinking, hospitalization and restraint, while challenging assumptions about what people with serious mental illness are capable of.
Watch: A Tale of Mental Illness — From the Inside
This would make my “Essential Viewing” list.
Mania / Bipolar Disorder
Helen M. Farrell — “What Is Bipolar Disorder?” | TED-Ed
This is the clean teaching piece. It’s short, extremely accessible, and has been viewed more than 14 million times. It explains mania, depression, symptoms, causes and treatment.
Watch: What Is Bipolar Disorder?
Andy Dunn — “Lessons From Losing My Mind” | TED
Dunn, the founder of Bonobos, describes living with bipolar I disorder, including severe mania and the consequences of illness while running a company. Importantly, the talk wrestles with both compassion and accountability, rather than romanticizing mania.
Watch: Lessons From Losing My Mind
There’s also Thomas Richardson’s “The Lure of Mania,” which specifically examines why mania can feel desirable—energy, ideas, confidence, drive—and therefore why someone may resist efforts to prevent escalation. That’s clinically useful.
Training
coming soon
DCF & APS Reporting
Policies & Protocols
coming soon
Tools and Resources
Child Abuse & Neglect Reporting
Vermont mandated reporters who reasonably suspect child abuse or neglect must report within 24 hours. DCF’s Child Protection Line is 1-800-649-5285, 24/7. DCF also has a newly updated 2026 Vermont Mandated Reporter Training, which I would actually cross-list under Trainings.
Vermont DCF — Mandated Reporting
Vulnerable Adult Abuse, Neglect & Exploitation
For suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a vulnerable adult, clinicians should use Vermont Adult Protective Services. APS specifically notes that it is not an emergency service; immediate life-threatening situations should go to 911 first.
Vermont Adult Protective Services — Make a Report
Domestic & Sexual Violence
Vermont maintains statewide resources including the Domestic Violence hotline (1-800-228-7395) and Sexual Violence hotline (1-800-489-7273).
Vermont Domestic Violence Resources
Vulnerable Adults / Elder Abuse / Neglect / Exploitation
The Administration for Community Living’s APS Technical Assistance Resource Center has both a webinar library and a professional podcast series devoted to Adult Protective Services. The material includes abuse, neglect, exploitation, self-neglect, disability, autonomy, mental illness, hoarding, trauma-informed approaches, risk, and the tension between safety and self-determination.
Books, Videos, and Podcasts
Training
Vermont Mandated Reporter Training
The 2026 Vermont Mandated Reporter Training covers recognition of child abuse and neglect, Vermont reporting responsibilities, and responding appropriately when concerns arise.