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Abstract
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In the first part of this series of articles, I presented some ideas for the evaluation of the lower level objectives of suicide prevention centers. The measures I looked at there were:
(1) Counselor-rated improvement of the patient as a result of the telephone contact, (2) The extent of and success in referring patients both to the SPCS clinic and to other
agencies,
(3) Interviews with high risk groups (attempted suicides to see whether they had heard of the
SPCS and whether they had called the SPCS, and
(4) Looking up the death certificates of completed suicides in Erie County to see how many
of them had called the SPCS as far as one could tell. (A large proportion of callers to the SPCS are anonymous.)
The aim of this series of articles is to suggest to other suicide prevention centers the kinds of measures that they can consider in evaluating their operation. In order to better illustrate the particular measures described, I presented old data from the SPCS of Erie County.
This paper suggests some more kinds of measures that can be utilized by suicide prevention centers in evaluating their operation, and again there are some illustrative data from earlier in the SPCS's operation.
In future articles in this series, I hope to suggest additional kinds of measures, present data on the evaluation of the higher level objectives of suicide prevention centers (such as the study of changes in the suicide rate of the community served), and to report on how, in one suicide prevention center, monitoring of the operations of the center have led to improvement in the service performed by the center.
Language: en |