Each May, Mental Health Awareness Month, Military Appreciation Month, and Memorial Day offer a wealth of opportunities to honor the contributions of service members, Veterans, and their families and recognize the impacts that military service can have on mental health.

In recognition of this connection between service and mental wellness, SAMHSA’s Service Members, Veterans, and their Families Technical Assistance Center (SMVF TA Center) is bringing you an interview with Maine’s Suicide Mortality Review Team Lead, Kiley Wilkens-O’Brien, LSW, MPPM. In 2025, Maine joined the 29 States and Territories and 4 communities across the country that have participated, or are participating, in the Suicide Mortality Review Academy process, a partnership between SAMHSA and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). To her role as Suicide Mortality Review Team Lead, Kiley brings both lived wisdom as a multi suicide loss and attempt survivor and extensive professional experience on the frontlines and in policymaking.

On March 23, 2026, the Maine Legislature passed Public Law Chapter 586, establishing a Suicide Mortality Review Panel. In this interview, Kiley reflects on the journey to this legislative support, the role of the Governor’s Challenge team, and the impact she expects this legislation will have on their work.

Can you describe the legislation that passed in 2026 and how it came to be? How involved was the Governor’s Challenge team?

Public Law Chapter 586 establishes Maine’s Suicide Mortality Review Panel: a multidisciplinary body with the legal authority to conduct retrospective case reviews of suicide deaths, access records across systems, engage next of kin voluntarily, and report findings annually to the Governor and Legislature. It was signed on March 23, 2026, and took effect immediately. That immediacy was intentional – we couldn’t afford to lose momentum. So, we filed with an emergency preamble so that the 90-day waiting period wouldn’t apply.

The Governor’s Challenge team wasn’t just involved; it was the origin. The Maine Bureau of Veterans’ Services (MBVS) had been participating in the Governor’s and Mayor’s Challenges for four years. It was that sustained state-federal partnership that built the coalition and the infrastructure this legislation was able to stand on. In the fall of 2024, The Bureau won a competitive $300,000 cooperative agreement to investigate creating a suicide mortality review board. These funds were used to bring me on as the Suicide Mortality Review Team Lead.

In January 2025, Maine attended the SMR Policy Academy in Reno as part of SAMHSA’s SMVF Technical Assistance Center initiative. That’s where the planning process really crystallized. Ben Barrowman of the TA Center and Maryam Basmenji of the VA were instrumental over the following year. They provided guidance and connections to experts and peers nationwide as we developed a landscape analysis, charter, launched working groups, adopted data tools, and drafted data-sharing agreements. Our proposed bill was thoroughly researched and clearly defined. We were asking the Legislature to codify something that was already built and ready to go.

Senator Angus King also engaged at the federal level. We had hoped to apply for Phase 2 funding of the cooperative agreement which would have provided an additional up to $500,000 for implementation of the SMR. Sen. King led a bipartisan call urging VA to restore the SMR cooperative agreement funding that supported this work. Though the effort was unsuccessful, that federal advocacy mattered. We were able to show bi-partisan support for this work nationally.

How do you anticipate this legislation will impact the team’s work moving forward?

The most significant shift is that there is now statutory infrastructure for this work. A Suicide Mortality Review Panel coordinator is housed within the Maine Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Office of Injury and Violence Prevention. Legislation also formalizes authority to access records across agencies, a mandatory annual report, and a mandate to coordinate with Maine’s existing mortality review panels. The annual report goes to the Governor and the Legislature. That accountability loop is new and significant.

For veterans specifically, this matters enormously. Maine has the highest veterans’ suicide rate in the Northeast, and nearly three-quarters of those deaths involve firearms. We have been doing prevention work with rigor and dedication, and we still have higher rates than our regional counterparts which tells us something is missing in the model. The panel gives us the mechanism to find out what that is. We can look at a case in full the healthcare contacts, the crisis encounters, the legal system involvement, the housing situation, the social context and start to understand where the system failed to connect.

What advice do you have for other Governor’s Challenge teams thinking about legislation to support SMR?

  • Make the legislative process part of your planning. We filed the bill during the same window on time that we were building the infrastructure so that, as part of the legislative argument, we could demonstrate the federal investment, the planning process, and the partners already at the table.
  • Start with publicly available data. You don’t need formal data sharing authority to make the case for why you need it. Every statistic in our emergency preamble came from publicly available sources: state CDC fact sheets, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention data, VA statistics, the Trevor Project’s state-level surveys. Know your state’s numbers before you ask for access to more.
  • Map your existing mortality review panels. Maine already had panels for child death, overdose deaths, maternal and infant mortality, and domestic violence homicides. Legislators didn’t have to imagine something new: they just had to ask why suicide was the one gap. That’s a much easier argument to make than building a brand-new concept from scratch. The coordinators of those panels also became early coalition partners who could speak credibly to the model.
  • Build the coalition before you need it. The nine sectors that showed up at our public hearing on February 4th were not recruited at the last minute. They were built through four years of Governor’s Challenge work the shared language, the shared urgency, the trust. When the bill was filed, they showed up because they already believed in it. You can’t manufacture that at the end. You grow it from the beginning.
  • Protect your confidentiality provisions from the start. Agencies are far more willing to share data when they understand exactly what happens to it who sees it, in what form, under what legal protections. Getting that right in the legislation builds trust that will matter long after the bill is signed.

About Kiley Wilkens-O’Brien

Kiley Wilkens-O’Brien is a nationally recognized public health strategist and licensed social worker whose work bridges the worlds of lived experience and policy innovation. A leader in suicide prevention, crisis system transformation, and grief-informed public health policy, she currently serves as Maine’s Suicide Mortality Review Team Lead. With a professional background that spans direct care in acute non-voluntary mental health settings and high-level policy development, Kiley is deeply committed to reshaping how systems understand and respond to suicide. Through her two ventures, Covenstead, LLC and Wilkens Consulting Group, Kiley provides strategic consulting, direct support, and systems-level policy advising rooted in dignity, autonomy, and lived experience.

Over the past decade, Kiley has shaped the behavioral health landscape in Maine and beyond. As a policy analyst for the state Medicaid agency, she secured and managed a federal CMS planning grant to reform Maine’s community-based mobile crisis and piloted a children’s behavioral health urgent care. She led the 988 planning coalition and was the driving force behind the creation of the state’s first crisis receiving center. Kiley has advised correctional leaders, multiple state health departments, and tribal health organizations on ethical crisis response and suicide prevention practices. She played a key role in developing Maine and Rhode Island’s Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) models and she remains a trusted thought partner to leaders across public health, veteran services, and justice sectors.

She has delivered keynote addresses and facilitated trainings for state agencies, national suicide prevention conferences, and professional associations including the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Kiley is known for transforming complicated data into compelling narratives, and for reminding public health professionals that dignity is non-negotiable.

Kiley holds a Bachelor’s degree from Goucher College, a Master’s degree from the University of Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service, and is a Licensed Social Worker. Her death doula approach to suicide prevention invites reflection, meaning-making, and creative postvention that transforms pain into purpose.

Kiley serves on the Cumberland County Jail Board of Visitors, the Officer Involved Shooter Review Panel, and she performs community grief rituals with the artistic collective, Hogfish.

About Suicide Mortality Review Committees

A Suicide Mortality Review Committee (SMRC) is a collaborative group of individuals that evaluate suicide deaths in a particular location or jurisdiction with the intent of identifying risk factors for and protective factors against suicide deaths that are unique to that location. The goals of an SMRC include:

  • Conduct analyses of identified deaths within a state, territory or community
  • Collect data that can help identify common trends among cases
  • Report findings in a clear, accessible and consistent manner
  • Make recommendations to key decision makers that will inform specific interventions intended to reduce the number of suicide deaths

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has partnered with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), to continue efforts around the Governor’s Challenge to Prevent Suicide Among Service Members, Veterans, and their Families. States, territories, and communities with existing Governor’s & Mayor’s Challenge teams have the opportunity to participate in a technical assistance process to support the planning and development of Suicide Mortality Review (SMR) efforts.

Special thanks to Kiley Wilkens-O’Brien for sharing her expertise and for her contributions to the work of preventing suicide among SMVF.

Thank you for your continued support and dedication to improving behavioral health care for those who have served, and are currently serving, our country.

SAMHSA’s SMVF TA Center is honored to provide TA to states, territories, and communities seeking to strengthen their behavioral health support for those who have served in the armed forces. For TA inquiries, please email smvftacenter@prainc.com. For more information about the SMVF TA Center and the resources offered, please visit SAMHSA’s SMVF TA Center’s web pages.