Suicide in a National Student Mental Health Patient Population, 1997-2012.

BACKGROUND: Entering higher education is a time of transition that coincides with the typical age of onset of serious mental illness. Awareness of the distinguishing characteristics of students with mental illness who die by suicide may inform clinical management. AIM: We aimed to compare the characteristics of mental health patients who died by suicide as students with other young people who died by suicide. METHOD: UK data were analyzed for individuals aged 18-35 years in contact with mental health services who died by suicide from 1997 to 2012. Univariate analyses examined the sociodemographic, behavioral, and clinical features of those who died as students. Backward stepwise regression analysis identified factors independently associated with student deaths. RESULTS: In all, 214 university students died by suicide within 12 months of mental health service contact. Factors associated with student deaths were: being younger, female, from an ethnic minority group, and a primary diagnosis of affective disorder. Medication nonadherence was less likely to be associated with student deaths. CONCLUSION: Deaths by suicide are split almost equally between male and female students, unlike the predominance of male suicide in the general population. There are clear differences in the characteristics of the student and nonstudent groups, although causation could not be established.

Attitudes and knowledge of clinical staff regarding people who self-harm: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The attitudes held by clinical staff towards people who harm themselves, together with their knowledge about self-harm, are likely to influence their clinical practice and hence the experiences and outcomes of patients. Our aim was to systematically review the nature of staff attitudes towards people who engage in self-harm, including the factors that influence them, and the impact of training on attitudes, knowledge and behaviour of staff. METHODS AND FINDINGS: A comprehensive search for relevant studies was performed on six electronic databases. Two independent reviewers screened titles, abstracts and full reports of studies, extracted data and gave each paper a quality rating. Qualitative and quantitative studies published in English were included. A total of 74 studies were included. Attitudes of general hospital staff, especially doctors, were largely negative, particularly towards individuals who repeatedly self-harm. Self-harm patients were viewed more negatively than other patients, except those abusing alcohol or drugs. Psychiatric staff in community and hospital settings displayed more positive attitudes than general hospital staff. Negative attitudes were more common among doctors than nursing staff although this was only true of general hospital staff. Active training led to consistent improvements in attitude and knowledge in all groups. CONCLUSIONS: Attitudes of general hospital staff towards self-harm patients are often negative, mirroring the experience of service users. Interventions can have a positive impact and improve the quality of patient care. LIMITATIONS: Included only English language publications.