As the largest provider group of outpatient mental health services, social workers are at the forefront of suicide prevention, yet lack formal education to recognize and respond to client suicide risk. The Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR; Quinnett, 1995) gatekeeper training teaches basic suicide prevention skills, focusing on suicide risk factors, warning signs, and response. Eight advanced MSW students, who completed the QPR training, participated in a face-to-face interview to share perspectives of the training and how they applied skills learned within their social work field placement. Study results provide crucial information about suicide prevention education for social workers.

Prominent neuroscience models suggest that addictive behavior occurs when environmental stressors and drug-relevant cues activate a cycle of cognitive, affective, and psychophysiological mechanisms, including dysregulated interactions between bottom-up and top-down neural processes, that compel the user to seek out and use drugs.

About 700,000 cases of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect are substantiated each year, making childhood maltreatment a common form of trauma in the histories of adults. We summarize the literature on the consequences of child maltreatment across the lifespan, agreeing with researchers who see maltreatment as a public health problem.

Lifetime limits on public assistance were introduced by the United States federal government in 1996 as part of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Many former recipients are no longer eligible for benefits having reached their lifetime limit. Local and national studies of post-welfare reform TANF leavers describe their circumstances.