{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0330847","title":"Suicide assessment and feasible evidence-based treatments for adolescents living with HIV in Malawi: Protocol for a pilot randomized controlled trial","abstract":"BACKGROUND: This pilot trial will investigate the feasibility, acceptability, fidelity, and preliminary efficacy of a combined youth-friendly suicide prevention and problem-solving intervention in reducing suicidal ideation and behaviors in adolescents living with HIV (ALWH) in Malawi. METHODS: ALWH (N = 60) aged 13-19 who reported suicidal ideation and behaviors will be recruited from 5 health clinics. Participants will be randomized 1:1 either to the Safety Planning and Friendship Bench (SP + FB) (n = 30) or to augmented usual care (n = 30) and followed for 6 months. SP + FB includes 6 individual counseling sessions and 6 bi-monthly peer support group sessions delivered by psychological counselors. Feasibility, acceptability, fidelity, and preliminary efficacy will be assessed at 6-weeks and 3- and 6-month study visits and compared across the 2 study arms. DISCUSSION: The results of this study will provide insights into the feasibility, acceptability, fidelity, and preliminary efficacy of the combined SP + FB for reducing chronic and acute suicidality in ALWH compared to standard of care. This pilot study will lay the groundwork to test the SP + FB in a large-scale cluster randomized controlled trial to improve suicide prevention resources and interventions for ALWH in Malawi. The findings of the study will add to a critical body of research aiming to implement feasible, acceptable, and effective suicide prevention interventions as part of adolescent HIV care in low-resource settings. TRIAL REGISTERATION: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT06770101.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2025,"id":574092,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9591,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"ClinicalTrials.gov":["NCT06770101"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1481887,"name":"Katherine Waddell","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1040952,"name":"Steven M. Mphonda","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":341632,"name":"Nivedita L. Bhushan","orcid":"0000-0002-3417-3263","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1481581,"name":"James January","orcid":"0000-0001-8074-9940","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1481582,"name":"Charles Masulani-Mwale","orcid":"0000-0001-8676-1713","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1263776,"name":"Gregory K. Brown","orcid":"0000-0002-1637-0335","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366447,"name":"Michael Udedi","orcid":"0000-0001-8769-4313","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":6027,"name":"Brian W. Pence","orcid":"0000-0001-7321-9538","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1481888,"name":"Jonathan Chiwanda","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366445,"name":"Bradley N. Gaynes","orcid":"0000-0002-8283-5030","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366446,"name":"Kazione Kulisewa","orcid":"0000-0002-2979-4495","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":735335,"name":"Melissa A. Stockton","orcid":"0000-0002-0737-7180","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":64,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:57:40.686992Z","pmid":"40901775","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}