The judgment of future suicide-related behavior: Helpline counselors' accuracy and agreement.
BACKGROUND
Judging whether a youth is at risk for suicide-related behavior (SRB) is considered an extremely challenging task. There are only few studies of helpline counselors, and little is known about their ability to accurately determine the level of risk for SRB.


OBJECTIVE
To examine whether helpline counselors can agree on judgments of risk for SRB, and whether their judgments are consistent with youths' actual behavior in a 6-month period following intake.


METHODS
34 helpline counselors, recruited from three helplines, were studied. Information was collected on their judgments of risk for SRB for each of 45 youths over a 6-month period following initial intake.


RESULTS
Contrary to expectations, the counselors had a high rate of agreement (k = .56), and their risk judgments could be used quite successfully (80.0% correct classification) in identifying youths who later engaged in SRB.


CONCLUSIONS
Unlike most other groups represented in the decision-making literature, helpline counselors agree and are accurate in their judgments of risk for SRB. Our findings suggest that it might be beneficial to apply some of the procedures used to train helpline clinicians to other types of clinicians. Further studies of helpline clinicians are suggested.
Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 East Fowler Ave., Tampa, FL 33620, USA. mkarver@chuma1.cas.usf.edu
Marc S
MS
Karver
Sarah J
SJ
Tarquini
Nicole E
NE
Caporino
D000293:Adolescent; D001315:Australia; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003376:Counseling / Q000193:education / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003419:Crisis Intervention / Q000458:organization & administration; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis; D003951:Diagnostic Errors / Q000145:classification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005544:Forecasting; D015277:Hotlines / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D015588:Observer Variation; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013714:Tennessee; D000092864:Suicide Prevention