Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH) investigators recently presented a proposed intervention aimed at one of psychiatry’s most dangerous transition points: the period immediately after a patient leaves inpatient psychiatric care, when suicide risk is at its highest.
The presentation was at the American Association of Suicidology Annual Conference in St. Louis in May.
Katherine Ponte, BA, JD, MBA, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry; Chyrell Bellamy, PhD, MSW, professor of psychiatry; and Mark Costa, MD, MPH, research scientist, introduced their project, “The Greeting Card Effect: Preventing Suicide with Caring Contacts from Inpatient to Home.”
The team described a peer-delivered Greeting Cards Intervention that draws on the evidence base for “caring contacts”—brief, non-demanding expressions of support shown in prior research to help reduce suicide risk.
What distinguishes the PRCH effort, the presenters said, is its grounding in lived experience. The intervention is being designed and refined by people who have experienced mental illness, psychiatric hospitalization, caregiving, and suicide loss, with the goal of creating a humane and scalable way to help patients feel remembered and supported after discharge.
The project builds on an existing initiative that has already distributed more than 25,000 handwritten cards across nine psychiatric hospitals. Using a co-design approach, the researchers are working to sharpen the card's messages and develop peer training and fidelity tools to support consistent, safe delivery.
The team also outlined a proposed pilot study intended to evaluate the program’s feasibility, acceptability, safety, and measurement procedures—including how to deliver cards during hospitalization and sustain supportive contacts as patients transition home.
If successful, the presenters suggested, the low-cost model could offer health systems a practical way to extend care beyond the hospital walls while centering empathy, connection, and patient-informed design.