title: Suicide intervention skills and related factors in community and health professionals.
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.
authors.affiliation: LUCAS, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. gert.scheerder@med.kuleuven.be
authors.forename: Gert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Scheerder
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Reynders
authors.forename: Karl
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Andriessen
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Van Audenhove
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003153:Community Health Services; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011361:Professional Competence; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012947:Social Work; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014838:Volunteers; D055815:Young Adult; D000092864:Suicide Prevention