Quality of assistance provided by members of the Australian public to a person at risk of suicide: associations with training experiences and sociodemographic factors in a national survey

Abstract

BackgroundMembers of the public can potentially take action to assist someone in their social network who is distressed and at risk of suicide. The present study used data from a community survey to examine training experiences and sociodemographic factors associated with the quality of assistance provided in such situations.MethodsA national telephone survey using random digit dialing was carried out with Australian adults on attitudes and intentions toward helping someone in severe distress or at risk of suicide, as well as actions taken. Participants were asked open-ended questions about their intentions to assist a hypothetical person in a vignette and about any actions they took to assist a family member or friend in distress over the previous 12 months. Each participant randomly received 1 of 6 vignettes which varied by gender and degree of suicidality portrayed. 3002 participants provided data on intentions and 932 on actions taken. Quality of Intentions and Quality of Actions were scored on 12-point scales.ResultsQuality of Intentions and Quality of Actions correlated 0.28. Quality of Intentions was associated with more overt suicidality in the vignette, age 31–59 years, female gender, university education, speaking English at home, being non-Indigenous and all forms of suicide training (professional, Mental Health First Aid and other). Quality of Actions was associated with female gender, university education and other suicide training.ConclusionsTraining on suicide prevention is associated with better quality of intentions and actions to help a person at risk of suicide. There are sub-groups in the population who are in greater need of such training because they have poorer quality of intentions to help and are less likely to have received training. These include males, less educated people and people from non-English speaking backgrounds.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12888-019-2050-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Confidence and Intentions to Help a Person at Risk of Suicide

“…Findings related to other topic areas of the survey have been, or will be, reported elsewhere. Two of these papers focus on the effects of suicide prevention training on confidence, intentions, and actions to assist someone in severe distress or at risk of suicide and conclude that such training has significant positive effects (Jorm, Nicholas, Pirkis, Rosetto, Fischer, et al., ; Jorm, Nicholas, Pirkis, Rossetto, & Reavely, ).…”

Helping actions given and received in response to suicide risk: Findings from an Australian nationally representative telephone survey

“…We report here on results from those sections of the survey that included questions about the actions taken by respondents to help a person in severe distress or at risk of suicide, and the help received if the respondent had themselves been at risk of suicide. Findings from other sections of the survey are reported elsewhere (Jorm et al, 2018a, Jorm, Nicholas, Pirkis, Rossetto, & Reavely, 2018; Nicholas et al, 2019). This paper reports on the real-life helping actions taken in response to suicide risk by Australian community members.…”

“…This paper reports on the real-life helping actions taken in response to suicide risk by Australian community members. Our previous papers relating to this survey relate to confidence and intentions to help a person at risk (Nicholas et al, 2019), the effects of suicide prevention training on helping intentions and behaviors (Jorm et al, 2018a, 2018b) and the effects of exposure to suicide on own suicidal thoughts (Maple, Sandford et al, 2019). Further papers will report on the relationships between believing in common suicide myths and helping intentions and behaviors.…”

Mental Health First Aid Training: A Study of Community Members’ Pre and Post-training Responses to a 17-Item Questionnaire

“…Other factors that might explain the pros and cons of this study include non-randomized, self-selected sample, not representing the larger community members but possibly satisfied, heterogeneous participants. All aforesaid challenges of MHFA course directed towards naïve public or communities are distinctively discussed and highlighted in various related studies [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]14,18,20,[25][26][27]. Another caveat of this study is that its results cannot be generalized to all the communities of Saudi Arabia.…”

“…MHFA program is directed towards MH workers, community members and public at large who after training provide firsthand guidance to persons developing a mental disorder [1]. MHFA training has been shown to increase participants' MH knowledge, reduce stigma, discrimination and unfavourable attitudes against mental illness, increase symptoms recognition, early access to healthcare pathways, early interventions, community support, and suicide prevention, the latter determined by multiple sociodemographic factors including means of suicide [3][4][5][6][7][8][9], all this could be grouped under the umbrella of MH literacy (MHL). Jorm and colleagues have defined the term MHL as 'the knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management or prevention' [10].…”