Suicide prevention competencies among urban Indian physicians: A needs assessment

Abstract

Introduction:India accounts for the highest estimated number of suicides in the World. In 2012, more than 258,000 of the 804,000 suicide deaths worldwide occurred in India. Early identification and effective management of suicidal ideation and behavior are paramount to saving lives. However, mental health resources are often scarce and limited. Throughout India, there is a severe shortage in mental health professions trained, which results in a treatment gap of about 90%. A comprehensive needs assessment was undertaken to identify the nature of the deficits in suicide prevention training for physicians in three Indian cities: Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Mysore.Materials and Methods:The study was carried out in several concurrent phases and used a mixed-method approach of converging quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Data were collected using survey questionnaires, focus groups, consultations, and environmental scans. A total of 46 physicians completed the questionnaire. Focus groups were conducted in Mumbai and Ahmedabad with 40 physicians. Consultations were carried out with psychiatrists and psychiatric residents from hospitals and clinics in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Mysore.Results:Training gaps in suicide prevention exist across the health care professions. Existing training lacks in both quality and quantity and result in critical deficits in core competencies needed to detect and treat patients presenting with suicidal ideation and behavior. Only 43% of the surveyed physicians felt they were competent to treat suicidal patients. The majority of surveyed physicians believed they would greatly benefit from additional training to enhance their suicide risk assessment and intervention skills.Conclusions:There is a dire need for medical schools to incorporate suicide prevention training as a core component in their medical curricula and for continuing medical education training programs for physicians to enhance competencies in early detection and management of suicidal behavior.

Indo-Canadian Collaboration for Suicide Prevention: Training Needs Assessment for Healthcare Professionals in India

“…However, it would have made no difference in the statistical significances of all the reported variables except for ''facts about suicide'' if Bonferroni correction was used. Since the finding regarding ''facts about suicide'' coincides with our qualitative data, we reported this as a significant result with a p = 0.05 (Eynan et al 2015). Therefore, we have not employed the Bonferrroni correction in our significance reporting.…”

“…At the end of the workshops, 144 questionnaires were completed and returned, indicating a response rate of 57.6 %. The findings of the qualitative research are published elsewhere (Eynan et al 2015).…”

Using the ADDIE Model of Instructional Design to Teach Chest Radiograph Interpretation

“…Several methods can be used to gather the information during the analysis phase, such as focus groups [8][9][10], oneon-one interviews, anonymous questionnaires or surveys [11,12], mixed qualitative-quantitative studies [13], expert consensus [14,15] or Delphi studies with content experts [16], audits or tests of current performance [17,18], opinions of graduates of the program [19], or a combination of these techniques [13,20]. Using these information gathering tools, the analysis phase can be subdivided into a needs analysis, task analysis, learner analysis, and performance analysis.…”

Suicide Is Not the Exclusive Domain of Medicine

“…62 That certain factors are associated increased risk of suicide is universally accepted. However, as mentioned above, Minois 16 states, it is illogical for those who believe "mental disorder is the cause of all suicide" to also believe in the importance of other risk factors.…”

“…This did not happen and the belief that mental disorder is the cause of almost all suicide cases 13,14 and suicide attempts 15 continues to appear in the scientific literature. There are frequent calls to address suicide prevention by increasing the competency of health professionals, 16,17 without any suggestion that non-medical professionals have a part to play. One paper correlates suicide rates with the density of psychiatrists in the region.…”