Mental health services for individuals at risk of suicide in Peru: Attitudes and perspectives of mental health professionals

The engaged community action for preventing suicide (ECAPS) model in Latin America: development of the ¡PEDIR! program

PURPOSE

It is estimated that someone dies by suicide every 40 s globally and that 3000 people end their lives daily. Of these deaths, 79% occur in low-resource settings. The very nature of the low-resource settings often serves as a barrier to the adoption and implementation of evidence-based suicide prevention models that have demonstrated success in high-resource countries. As such rates of suicide continue to increase, the workforce of trained mental health providers equipped to effectively engage, assess, and treat individuals struggling with suicidal thoughts and behaviors remains relatively stagnant. This paper aims to illustrate the implementation of the Engaged Community Action for Preventing Suicide (ECAPS) model as a means of developing a culturally relevant and responsive model of suicide prevention that is acceptable and sustainable in low-resource settings.

METHODS

University faculty and staff (n=34) and psychology students (n=25), and community-based mental health providers (n=41) providing mental health services to at-risk individuals in highly vulnerable communities in Lima, Peru participated in the implementation of ECAPS process.

RESULTS

The resulting program, ¡PEDIR!, demonstrates the acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness of the ECAPS model.

CONCLUSION

The ECAPS model is a feasible and effective framework for use in low-resource settings to guide the development of a culturally relevant community-level intervention to address the systemic, societal, and individual level factors that serve as barriers to suicide prevention.

The impact of Covid-19 on self-employed female psychologists in the UK

This scoping study reports on the experiences of 41 female self-employed psychologists (or psychologists in private practice) during the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. Psychologists are more likely to be female, and unlike employed people, self-employed female psychologists were more likely to be working in lone contexts, and they were unlikely to have had broader organisational and government support available to them. Yet, self-employed female psychologists still made a significant contribution to the UK's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to supporting children and adults, they have played an important role in shaping government policy, and in the delivery of mass media campaigns and public health messaging. In view of this, the current scoping study focused on how self-employed female psychologists were fairing during the unprecedented circumstances. How were their needs being met? Responses to open-ended survey questions were qualitatively examined using a thematic analysis approach. Overall, the findings suggest that lockdown has afforded some positive opportunities for self-employed female psychologists in the UK. However, for many, it has also had a detrimental impact on their family relationships, and on their own mental health and wellbeing. The findings indicate that self-employed female psychologists may need a more nuanced approach to mitigate against any long-term negative effects of Covid-19.

The Effects of a Psychodrama-Based Risk Management Training Program on the Knowledge and Practices of Turkish Nurses in Psychiatric Clinics

This study aimed to assess the effects of a psychodrama-based risk management training program on nurses' knowledge and practices. This study used a mixed methods design; quantitative and qualitative methods were used together with a single group pretest, post-test, and follow-up. The training program, in which the nurses took part, comprised six lessons that were designed using psychodrama methods. The result showed that risk management scores increased significantly after the training. Thus, this training is effective for improving the knowledge and practices of mental health nurses for risk management.