title: Assessment of private security guards by Suicide Probability Scale and Brief Symptom Inventory.
abstract: The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of suicide probability and relevant sociodemographic features and to provide information for preventing suicide in private security guards working under the stressful conditions and continuous exposure to the negative and traumatic life events.
  
  
  
  200 private security guards and 200 personnels of Ankara University participated in the
  study. A sociodemographic information questionnaire, the Suicide Probability Scale (SPS) and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) were used to collect the data.
  
  
  
  Gender, marital status, income, religious beliefs, experiencing a life-threatening situation, history of a suicide attempt, smoking and not having a chronic disease caused statistically significant differences in the scores for SPS between the private security guards group and the controls. Moreover there was a statistically significant positive correlation between the total scores of the subscales of SPS and the total scores of BSI.
  
  
  
  Like police officers and gendarmes, private security guards are at high risk of committing and
  attempting suicide because of being at stressful work settings and also suffering from secondary trauma. It is required that they should be aware of their tendency to commit suicide and have regular psychiatric screenings.
authors.affiliation: The Council of Forensic Medicine, Ministry of Justice, Istanbul, Turkey.
authors.forename: Bulent
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dogan
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ankara University, Dikimevi/Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Gurol
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Canturk
authors.affiliation: Department of Criminalistics, Institute of Forensic Sciences, Ankara University, Dikimevi/Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Nergis
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Canturk
authors.affiliation: Department of Criminalistics, Institute of Forensic Sciences, Ankara University, Dikimevi/Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Sevgi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Guney
authors.affiliation: Department of Criminalistics, Institute of Forensic Sciences, Ankara University, Dikimevi/Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Ebru
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Özcan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000786:Anger; D002055:Burnout, Professional / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000453:epidemiology; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D060731:Emergency Responders / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012306:Risk; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology*; D013405:Suicide; D014421:Turkey / Q000453:epidemiology; D014495:Universities