Author:

Keywords:

Adult, Community Health Services, Female, Health Personnel, Humans, Male, Professional Competence, Psychometrics, Questionnaires, Reproducibility of Results, Social Work, Students, Suicide, Voluntary Workers, Young Adult, Science & Technology, Social Sciences, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Psychiatry, Psychology, Multidisciplinary, Psychology, FRONT-LINE HEALTH, YOUTH SUICIDE, RESPONSE INVENTORY, PREVENTION, MANAGEMENT, KNOWLEDGE, WORK, PSYCHOLOGY, ATTITUDES, TEACHERS, Surveys and Questionnaires, Volunteers, Suicide Prevention, 1701 Psychology, 4203 Health services and systems, 5203 Clinical and health psychology, 5205 Social and personality psychology

Abstract:

Health and community professionals have considerable exposure to suicidal people and need to be well skilled to deal with them. We assessed suicide intervention skills with a Dutch version of the SIRI in 980 health and community professionals and psychology students. Suicide intervention skills clearly differed among professional groups and were strongly related to experience, especially suicide-specific experience. Some community professionals scored below acceptable levels on their ability to respond appropriately to suicidal people they encounter, and tended to overestimate their skills level. Training is therefore indicated for these groups, and may be useful to more highly experienced groups too.