Helping mothers build emotion skills to protect their children from suicide risk
Official title: Testing Emotion Regulation as an Intergenerational Mechanism of Suicide Risk in Mother-Child Dyads
Funded at University of Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh · NIH-11242084 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project teaches DBT emotion-regulation skills to mothers with past suicidal behavior to help their children (about 9–14 years old) better handle emotions and lower suicide risk.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Pittsburgh, United States) |
| Project start | December 8, 2023 |
| Project end | November 30, 2028 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $778,155 |
| NIH project number | 5R01MH132543-03 |
| Project ID | NIH-11242084 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal participants are mother–child pairs where the mother has a history of suicidal behavior and the child is in the roughly 9–14 year age range.
✕Less likely to help
Families where the mother has no history of suicidal behavior or children who are far outside the target age range are unlikely to receive direct benefit from this project.
What this research studies
If you join, you and your child will enroll as a mother–child pair and the mother will be randomly assigned to receive DBT skills training or usual services. You will learn practical emotion-regulation and parenting strategies, and researchers will track how mothers respond to children's emotions and how children manage feelings over time. The team will collect information through questionnaires, interviews, and brief behavioral tasks during follow-up visits across several years. The aim is to see whether improving mothers' emotion skills and responses reduces emerging suicidal thoughts, behaviors, and other mental health problems in children as they grow into adolescence.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, the approach could give families concrete parenting skills that reduce children's risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
How similar studies have gone: DBT skills have been shown to reduce self-harm and improve emotion regulation in adults, but using maternal DBT skills training to prevent child suicide risk is a newer, less-tested approach.
Where this research is happening
-
University of Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Stepp, Stephanie D — University of Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh
- Study coordinator: Stepp, Stephanie D
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.