Abstract
Background: although Primary Care is crucial for suicide prevention, clinicians tend to report completed suicides in their care as non-preventable.
Aims: to examine systemic inadequacies in suicide prevention from the perspectives of bereaved family members and GPs.
Design: Qualitative study of 72 relatives or close friends bereaved by suicide and 19 General practitioners who have experienced the suicide of patients.
Findings: relatives highlight failures in detecting symptoms and behavioural changes and int he inability of GPs to understand the needs of patients and their social contexts. A perceived over-reliance of anti-depressant treatment is a major source of criticism by family members. GPs tend to lack confidence in the recognition and management of suicidal patients and report structural inadequacies of service provision.
Conclusions: Mental health and primary care services must find innovative and ethical ways to involve families in the decision-making process for patients at risk of suicide.
Aims: to examine systemic inadequacies in suicide prevention from the perspectives of bereaved family members and GPs.
Design: Qualitative study of 72 relatives or close friends bereaved by suicide and 19 General practitioners who have experienced the suicide of patients.
Findings: relatives highlight failures in detecting symptoms and behavioural changes and int he inability of GPs to understand the needs of patients and their social contexts. A perceived over-reliance of anti-depressant treatment is a major source of criticism by family members. GPs tend to lack confidence in the recognition and management of suicidal patients and report structural inadequacies of service provision.
Conclusions: Mental health and primary care services must find innovative and ethical ways to involve families in the decision-making process for patients at risk of suicide.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 369 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | BMC Psychiatry |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 21 Nov 2017 |
Keywords
- Journal Article
Access to Document
- The failure of suicide prevention in primary care: family and GP perspectives – a qualitative study
© 2017 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
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Karen Galway
- School of Nursing and Midwifery - Senior Lecturer
- Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation
Person: Academic