Mental Health First Aid Guidelines for Helping a Suicidal Person: a Delphi Consensus Study in India

The study aimed to develop guidelines for how a member of the Indian public should provide mental health first aid to a suicidal person. The guidelines were produced by developing a questionnaire containing possible first aid actions & asking an expert panel to rate whether each action should be included in the guidelines. 3 rounds of rating were carried out; during the first round, panel members were asked to suggest any additional actions not covered in the original questionnaire. 71 action statements met the consensus criterion & were used to develop the guidelines appended to this article. (25 refs.) JA