title: Exploration of factors associated with social worker attitudes toward suicide.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social workers are expected to play important roles in suicide intervention. Caregiving behaviours of medical personnel to suicidal individuals have been reported to be influenced by their own attitudes toward suicide. In this context, only a limited number of studies have examined social workers' attitudes toward suicide.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to explore associations between personal or occupational factors of social workers and their attitudes toward suicide.
  
  
  METHODS
  A self-administered questionnaire was mailed to 2,999 study participants registered with the Tokyo chapter of the Japanese Association of Certified Social Workers. We adopted the Attitudes Toward Suicide Scale (ATTS) to measure attitudes toward suicide. MANCOVA was used to test for the effects of demographic, personal and occupational factors on ATTS sub-scale scores.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Participants with a history of suicidal thoughts had stronger attitudes regarding the right to suicide than those with no history; these attitudes were not affected by a history of participating in suicide-prevention training.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings suggest that suicide education should incorporate programmes directed at altering permissive attitudes toward suicide.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Suicide Prevention, National Institute of Mental Health, National Centre of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan. mkodaka@ncnp.go.jp
authors.forename: Manami
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kodaka
authors.forename: Masatoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Inagaki
authors.forename: Vita
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Poštuvan
authors.forename: Mitsuhiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yamada
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D003710:Demography; D004493:Education / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011314:Preventive Health Services; D012297:Right to Die; D012938:Social Perception; D012947:Social Work / Q000145:classification / Q000193:education / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014041:Tokyo; D000092864:Suicide Prevention