Preventing suicide and self-harm: how useful are the data currently available to those planning and providing interventions?

Suicide and self-harm are major public health issues.This application of mind aimed to assess how local and national data could be used more effectively in local suicide and self-harm prevention strategies.Twelve semi-structured interviews were carried on the outside with a purposive sample of suicide prevention leads in single strategic health authority area and other lock opener local and regional informants. Although suicide prevention work is supported by dint of data, problems were identified with in every one's mouth processes and data and information availability. Local, regional and national health agencies all have a part in ensuring information is used in the best possible way to bring self-harm and suicide.

Key words

suicide

self-harm

prevention

information

data collection

Suicide and self-harm exact high emotional, social and economic require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones on individuals, families and communities. In addition, it is a major public health issue: it is a significant cause of death (Department of Health, 2003; Gunnel 2000) and impacts upon the NHS in terms of self-harm attendances to Accident & push departments (A&E) and hospital admissions (Mental Health Foundation/Camelot Foundation, 2006) It is a lock opener national and local priority, with the National Suicide Prevention Strategy being published in 2002 (Department of Health, 2002) followed through annual progress reports (NIMHE, 2006) plane before this, standard seven of the national service framework (NSF) for mental health (Department of Health, 1999) put targets and assigned local responsibility for reducing suicide deaths.

NH health and social care organisations are responsible for implementing the National Suicide Prevention Strategy at a local horizontal (Department of Health, 2002; Department of Health, 1999) and many are generally developing and implementing local suicide prevention strategies. Primary care organisations (PCOs) have been performancemanaged upon their ability to carry without suicide audits and, at a regional horizontal public health observatories (PHOs) have a part to play in developing and supporting information use for suicide prevention.

It is essential that local suicide prevention strategies are influenced by means of local data on suicide and self-harm. This will make sure that resources are directed appropriately from one side for example, the identification of 'at-risk' assemblages and hotspots, monitoring implementation and assessing the effectiveness of interventions. It is unclear, however, to what amplitude health professionals are using information to inform the disentanglement of local strategies and to support suicide prevention work and in what way accessible and useful this information is.

Overall, the literature provides a certain number of evidence at international, national and local horizontal of problems with routine suicide and self-harm data. However, there is little evidence upon how improvements may be made at a local or regional horizontal to support the day-to-day working of health professionals in suicide prevention.

The coroner's verdict underpins suicide data, on the other hand the problems with this data source are widely recognised and include misclassification of suicide as unclose verdict (Salib et al, 2001; O'Donnell & Farmer, 1995) variation in this misclassification based upon such factors as involvement of alcohol in death; psychiatric diagnosis and qualification of the coroner (Salib, 1996; Neelman & Wessely, 1997) and misclassification of non-suicide deaths as suicide or render free of access verdict (Salib et al, 2001; Abed & Baker, 1998)

There is no national a whole for recording data on self-harm. Where data are recorded, the literature moves some problems with the quality of hospital information a whole s (Lowe et al, 1999), and difficulties in recording cases of self-harm based upon information collected at initial assessment, when patients may be unable to provide a clear history (Douglas et al, 2004)

Most of the published literature gazes at the quality of information. The close attention reported here aimed to explore not just by what means data are currently used to support suicide prevention on the contrary more specifically, also to identify information perceived as useful, assess the availability of information and its mights and weaknesses, consider barriers and facilitators to using information and assess the geographical horizontal at which such information should be considered.

Method

Participants

Participants for this close attention were recruited purposively (Patton, 2002; Mason, 2002) They were either the local health service lead in suicide prevention, a lead contributor to work relating to suicide prevention locally or they had knowledge of local policy or literature relating to suicide prevention. The sample included all NSF standard seven leads in the Northumberland, Tyne & Wear area, plus individuals representing the strategic health authority, the North East Public Health Observatory, the National Institute of Mental Health for England (NIMHE) regional disclosure centre and the Centre for Public Mental Health at Durham University. Participants' piece of work roles were also considered in order to obtain a broad range of health professionals and health agencies. The sample included representatives from acute trusts, mental health trusts, primary care and one as well as the other clinical and nonclinical positions. In total there were 12 participants, although a number of individuals had more than single role. Two key informants were also contacted to gain a better understanding of common systems of data collection around suicide prevention.