Suicide Intervention Skills and Related Factors in Community and Health Professionals

Health & community professionals have considerable exposure to suicidal people & need to be well-skilled to deal with them. The authors assessed suicide intervention skills with a Dutch version of the Suicide Intervention Response Inventory in 980 health & community professionals & psychology students. Suicide intervention skills clearly differed among professional groups & were strongly related to experience, especially suicide-specific experience. Some community professionals scored below acceptable levels on their ability to respond appropriately & tended to overestimate their skill level. Training is indicated for these groups & may be useful to more highly experienced groups too. (32 refs.) JA