P-1437 - Police Training as Suicide Prevention Strategy: Preliminary Results From Slovenia

Abstract

Introduction:

Police officers are important gatekeepers in suicide prevention, but at the same time, cases of suicidal behaviour and suicides are, among other deaths, one of the most stressful parts of their job. Police trustees are a special group of police officers who offer support to their colleagues in ambiguous or stressful cases.

Aim:

The objective of this study was to educate and train the police trustees on suicide prevention and help them dealing with the suicide related situations. Besides, we aimed to evaluate the effects of the intervention.

Method:

13 police trustees (M_age = 39,23 years; SD_age = 16,23) participated in our 1-day workshop. We used a pre-post evaluation design with both quantitative and qualitative questions. We used Perceived Stress Scale PSS (Cohen et al., 1983), and additional questions on self-perceived competence and anxiety regarding suicide related situations as evaluation tools.

Results:

Preliminary results show that according to the questionnaire's norms, four participants reported slightly higher level of perceived stress prior to our training. Further on, most common answers on self-perceived competence questions were either moderately or quite competent in suicide related situations, but participants also feel moderately to severely anxious in these situations. Our workshop met the expectations of a vast majority (86%) of attendees.

Conclusions:

In our opinion, preliminary results show a great need for further cooperation with the police in suicide prevention initiatives. Follow up evaluation will serve as an indicator of the workshop's efficacy and will serve as guideline for its improvement.