Citation

Inga-Lill R, Danuta W. Nord. J. Psychiatry 2004; 58(5): 389-394.

Affiliation

Department of Public Health Sciences Swedish National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill-Health (NASP) at the Swedish National Institute for Psychosocial Medicine (IPM), WHO Collaborating Centre

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/08039480410005954

PMID

15513616

Abstract

To promote implementation of suicide-preventive activities, the Swedish National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill-Health (NASP) introduced a 200-h academic, postgraduate educational programme (based on the training-of-trainers model) in suicide prevention. This programme was provided at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, for key persons in psychiatric care. Twenty-nine key persons from 11 psychiatric intervention clinics in Stockholm County attended the first course. Preconditions for implementing suicide-preventive activities were assessed by means of semi-structured interviews with all course participants still working in the intervention clinics (n=10). In all but one of these 10 clinics, a wide range of suicide-preventive activities had been implemented as a result of the NASP course. Activities varied in scope, but the key persons seemed to have succeeded in pinpointing the key elements in suicide prevention - the need for specific knowledge about the suicidal process and for well-defined suicide-preventive routines. However, organizational factors and staff turnover were obstacles to maintaining and making the activities routine. There is a need to strengthen the course participants' formal roles as implementers and encourage the clinical management in their continuous implementation of suicide-preventive activities.