Understanding of an attempted suicide healthcare effectiveness

It is well known that suicide attempters have a higher risk of death by suicide. Various interventions are applied after a suicide attempt, though we still lack empirical evidence for their effectiveness. This research aims to understand and reveal suicide attempters’ understanding of healthcare effectiveness. This research is based on qualitative methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 7 participants – 5 females, 2 males (average age was 26). All of them took part in Attempted Suicide Short Intervention Program (ASSIP). Qualitative data analysis was based on thematic analysis by Boyatzis (1998). Results revealed that impact of help was perceived as life-saving, helping to avoid further suicide attempt and providing better understanding of one‘s difficulties. Feelings related to suicide attempt, personal characteristics and unwillingness to talk about one‘s problems formed barriers to accept help even though it was sought. Participants stressed the importance of their relationship with healthcare staff – they reported benefits of an equal, collaborative, professional and safe relationship. Meanwhile, a disrespectful relationship and overly strict treatment methods (such as isolation, fixation, etc.) were evaluated as harmful. As effective elements of the suicide-specific psychological aid were named noticing signs of crisis, creation of a safety plan, realistic and short-term goals, specifity and variety of methods being used. Effectiveness of pharmacological treatment was ambigous. Needs for help after the discharge from hospital varied – some were reluctant to continue treatment and felt self-sufficient, others felt the need for further psychological help. According to participants, the effectiveness of help could be increased by its timeliness – receiving help before the onset of suicidal thoughts, knowing about help availability and also, by longer, more frequent consultations with mental health specialists

“I Didn’t Feel Treated as Mental Weirdo”: Primary Findings on Helpful Relationship Characteristics in Suicide Attempt Health Care in Lithuania

This article aims to investigate helpful relationship characteristics in suicide attempt health care. Semistructured interviews with seven participants (five women and two men; meanage = 26) were conducted after a suicide attempt. All participants took part in the Attempted Suicide Short Intervention Program (ASSIP). Findings revealed the necessity of an egalitarian, attentive, benevolent, and competent relationship with health-care specialists. Coercive clinical management was considered disrespectful, while the needs for physical safety and freedom were expressed. A suicide-specific treatment program in addition to standard care was considered helpful, in particular the development of warning signs and safety strategies

Do adjectives exhaust the personality lexicon? A psycholexical study of the Lithuanian language

Background The psycholexical approach is based on the assumption that the most important individual differences that people can observe have been encoded into the natural language. Thus, by studying the structure of these lexicons, we are able to identify individual differences that are universal across cultures as well as dimensions that are unique to some of them. The aim of the study was to develop a psycholexical taxonomy of the Lithuanian language including different parts of speech. Participants and procedure the authors analysed over 76,000 entries included in a dictionary of Lithuanian and identified 9625 person-descriptive terms: adjectives, attribute-nouns, type-nouns, and participles. The selected lexical material was classified by a team of six judges into 11 subcategories making up six higher-order categories. The authors performed the psychometric validity and consistency of the judges’ classification decisions. Results The analysis of proportions between types of lexical units describing dispositional traits showed that nearly 20.00% of terms in the personality lexicon did not have an adjectival form and were expressed by means of other – morphemically non-redundant – parts of speech. Conclusions The present study points to the necessity of taking into account various parts of speech describing dispositional traits in order to avoid the error of reductionism; it also contributes to the debate on universals in personality description. The results of the study can be used to determine the structure of the description of individual differences for the Lithuanian personality lexicon, for type-nouns or attribute-nouns, and for non-dispositional categories, including emotions, social effects, and worldview