Effects of Educating Local Government Officers and Healthcare and Welfare Professionals in Suicide Prevention

Suicide is a major public health issue. In Japan, local governments are responsible for suicide prevention, and local government officers are therefore expected to act as gatekeepers for suicide prevention. In this study, through a questionnaire survey, the authors examined the current knowledge and attitudes concerning suicide prevention among local government officers and healthcare and welfare professionals, and the effects of providing suicide prevention education on their knowledge of and attitudes toward suicide and its prevention. One hundred eighty-three local government officers and 432 healthcare/welfare professionals completed the survey before and after a single education session. Before the session, the local government officers and healthcare/welfare professionals showed mainly positive attitudes toward suicide prevention efforts, with little difference between the two groups. After the training, knowledge and attitudes were further improved for most questionnaire items. Respondents with one or more experiences of suicide prevention training showed significantly more knowledge and positive attitudes before the training than those with no such experience. Moreover, knowledge of depression and having a sympathetic attitude were found to be especially associated with the overall attitude that “suicide can be prevented”. Training in suicide prevention was shown to be effective in promoting appropriate knowledge and attitudes among local government officers and healthcare/welfare professionals who are gatekeepers for preventing suicide. Our findings confirm the importance of suicide prevention education, and will contribute to creating a standard educational program on suicide prevention in Japan

Efficacy of shared decision making on treatment satisfaction for patients with first-admission schizophrenia: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Shared decision making is a promising model for patient-centred medicine, resulting in better clinical outcomes overall. In the mental health field, interventions that consider the patient-centred perspective—such as patient quality of life, involvement in the treatment, treatment satisfaction, and working alliance—have increased and better clinical outcomes discovered for patients with schizophrenia. However, few studies have examined the efficacy of shared decision making for schizophrenia treatment. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of a shared decision making intervention compared to treatment as usual on patient satisfaction at discharge for first-admission patients with schizophrenia. METHODS/DESIGN: This is a randomised, parallel-group, two-arm, open-label, single-centre study currently being conducted in an acute psychiatric ward of Numazu Chuo Hospital, Japan. We are recruiting patients between 16 and 65 years old who are admitted to the ward with a diagnosis of schizophrenia without prior experience of psychiatric admission. Fifty-eight participants are being randomised into a shared decision making intervention group or a treatment as usual control group in a 1:1 ratio. The intervention program was developed based on a shared decision making model and is presented as a weekly course lasting the duration of the patients’ acute psychiatric ward stay. The primary outcome measure is patient satisfaction at discharge as assessed by the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire. Due to the study’s nature, neither the patient nor staff can be blinded. DISCUSSION: This is the first randomised controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of shared decision making for patients with early-treatment-stage schizophrenia. The intervention program in this study is innovative in that it includes both of the patient and staff who are involved in the treatment. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study has been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT01869660

I軸とII軸を並存する自殺企図患者に対するアサーティブケースマネージメントによる介入の効果：無作為化比較試験の二次解析

Background: Most suicide attempters suffer from psychiatric disorders, which are often comorbid with personality disorders. The effects of intervention on patients who have attempted suicide with comorbid Axis I and II diagnoses have not been fully elucidated. We evaluated whether assertive case management can reduce the repetition of suicidal behaviours in patients who had attempted suicide with comorbid Axis I and II diagnoses. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial investigating whether assertive case management could reduce the repetition of suicide attempts, compared with enhanced usual care. Subjects were divided into those who had comorbid Axis I and II diagnoses (Axis I + II group), and those who had an Axis I diagnosis without Axis II comorbidity (Axis I group). Outcome measures were compared between patients receiving a case management intervention and patients receiving enhanced usual care, as allocated. The primary outcome measure was the incidence proportion of the first episode of recurrent suicidal behaviour at 6 months after randomisation. We calculated risk ratios (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) at 6 months and 12 months after randomisation of patients in the Axis I and Axis I + II groups. Results: Of 914 enrolled patients, 120 (13.1%) were in the Axis I + II group, and 794 (86.9%) were in the Axis I group. Assertive case management was significantly effective for the Axis I group on the primary outcome at 6 months (risk ratio [RR] 0.51, 95% confidence intervals [CI] 0.31 to 0.84). The RR of the Axis I + II group was 0.44 (95% CI 0.14 to 1.40). Conclusions: Assertive case management not only had an effect on patients who had attempted suicide with only Axis I disorders but may also have a similar effect on patients with comorbid Axis I and II disorders.博士（医学）・乙第1503号・令和3年3月15日© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 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 in a credit line to the data