Low-cost scalable community-based suicide prevention initiatives:
THE SUICIDE FIRST AID RESEARCH
WHO (2014) and several scholars have indicated gatekeeper training as one of the main suicide prevention strategies while recommending tailoring its content and approach to the population. The suicide first aid guidelines research and evidence-based associated resources led by Professor Dr Erminia Colucci and developed in the last decade for India, Japan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and people from immigrant and refugee backgrounds were built based on this recommendation. [NOTE: these guidelines and related training are now called Suicide Prevention Guidelines to differentiate them from the recently trademarked UK-based training company with the same name).
The guidelines were developed through a structured consultative process (supported by the Delphi-consensus method), which involved key suicide prevention and/or transcultural mental health professional and lived experience experts. Through this approach, warning signs and first aid actions were identified and included into the guidelines and accompanying infographic and training videos to be used for gatekeeper trainings for suicide prevention for people from immigrant and/or refugee backgrounds. These guidelines have been used in the past to provide training in Philippines, Japan and among people from migrant and refugee backgrounds.
Recent large-scale crises (including epidemics/pandemics and natural disasters) have highlighted even more the importance of developing community-based suicide prevention strategies, such as gatekeepers trainings, which can be delivered at low-cost while potentially be quickly scalable also through online/virtual platforms. For instance, during the COVID19 lockdown, the project PI/lead (Assoc. Prof Colucci Erminia) has been delivering both short introduction webinars to the Suicide First Aid Guidelines for India in collaboration with NIMHANS (Bangalore, India) as well as developing longer trainings in collaboration with Save the Children.
Further development of low-cost scalable community-based suicide prevention guidelines for specific populations, and associated resources and trainings to be delivered face to face or virtually, might result even more important in the current and future epidemic/pandemic scenarios. However, it is imperative that such tools and trainings reflect the cultural and contextual specificities of the populations they are developed for and are, therefore, locally tailored rather than follow a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, as highlighted in our article.
On ORCID you can find the articles and related freely available guidelines (containing acknowledgments to the partners in these projects). The guidelines for Pakistan are currently under development, please sign up to this website or return here for updates.
You can also read an evaluation based on the guidelines for people from migrant and refugee backgrounds (another one is in press):
Watch below a short-animation based on the guidelines for people from immigrant and refugee backgrounds.
SUICIDE PREVENTION GUIDELINES FOR PEOPLE FROM IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE BACKGROUND INFOGRAPHIC
Migrant and Refugee guidelines article
SUICIDE PREVENTION GUIDELINES FOR PHILIPPINES INFOGRAPHIC
movie-ment.org 