An educational intervention for front-line health professionals in the assessment and management of suicidal patients (The STORM Project)

Abstract

Training in the assessment and management of suicide risk can be delivered to approximately half the targeted staff in primary care, accident and emergency departments and mental health services. The current training package can improve skills and is well accepted. If it were to produce a modest fall in the suicide rate, such training would be cost-effective. However, a future training programme should develop a broader training package to reach those who will not attend.

Advances in psychiatric treatment in primary care

“…The preference for such therapies expressed by both patients and physicians can also adversely affect recruitment (Fairhurst & Dowrick, 1996). Several well-designed trials have been published that provide credible evidence of clinical and cost-effectiveness, at least in the short-term, for specific interventions such as cognitive-behavioural (Appelby et al, 1997;Scott et al, 1997) and interpersonal (Shea et al, 1992) therapies. However, these interventions are somewhat complex and involve relatively lengthy training periods, and it is not yet clear how readily applicable they may be in primary care settings.…”

“…In a pilot study for the STORM project (Appelby et al, 2000), an educational programme for 'frontline' staff in primary care, accident and emergency units and community mental health teams was associated with a subsequent 14% drop in suicide in following year in the health district where the study took place, at a time when the national suicide rate increased by almost 4%.…”

Promoting mental health in men

“…The Skills and Training On Risk Management (STORM) initiative, designed to develop skills required to assess and manage those at risk of suicide, has been implemented and evaluated among healthcare professionals in primary care, emergency departments, and mental health and prison services in England and Scotland. Evaluations indicate that STORM training can improve identification of patients at risk of suicide (Appleby et al 2000, Gask et al 2006.…”

An Electronic Clinical Decision Support System for the Assessment and Management of Suicidality in Primary Care: Protocol for a Mixed-Methods Study (Preprint)

“…Although there are several evidence-based suicide prevention training programmes e.g. Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST); Skills-based Training On Risk Management for suicide prevention (STORM) demonstrating sustained improvements in knowledge, skills and attitudes [22,23,24], these do not address the challenges to the assessment and management of suicidality in primary care, such as lack of guidance during the consultation and support in clinical decision making [11]. Suicide prevention training programmes for GPs specifically have produced ambiguous results as many of these are provided to health professionals at population levels, rather than targeting GPs working in primary care [25].…”