Working to prevent suicidal behaviour
A groundbreaking mental health initiative that could help prevent suicidal behaviour is being piloted in Lanarkshire.
The Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) programme is a short-term mediation for people showing immediate distress or emotional pain to frontline health, police, paramedic and primary care staff.
DBI sees specially trained staff help individuals manage difficult emotions and problem situations early on, and come up with a ‘distress management plan’ to prevent future crisis.
The programme emerged from the Scottish Government’s work on suicide prevention and mental health strategies.
It was launched in 2017 and is being piloted in four areas – Lanarkshire, Aberdeen, Borders and Inverness – with emergency department staff, police officers, SAS paramedics and technicians, GPs and out-of-hours, NHS 24, six level 2 providers and the University of Glasgow’s institute of health and wellbeing.
Following early positive feedback, a decision was taken to extend it in May 2019 to include 16- and 17-year-olds.
National DBI programme manager Kevin O’Neill said: “It’s very encouraging to see that the implementation of DBI has generally been delivered as intended and has been broadly welcomed by all those involved.
“I must thank the evaluation team not only for the report but also their support in using the findings to help us continue to improve DBI and provide the best connected, compassionate support possible.
“I hope all the staff involved with the DBI programme take tremendous encouragement from this as it validates all the tremendous work they have put win to date.”
The interim evaluation found that the most common presenting problem was feeling depressed/ low mood, followed by stress/anxiety and then suicidal thoughts.
The most common contributory factor was relationship issues.
Life coping issues and emotional wellbeing were more commonly reported for women than for men; alcohol and substance use were more commonly reported for men than for women.
Mental health minister Clare Haughey, said: “DBI plays a key role in helping people in distress by getting them the support they need and it’s very encouraging that people are saying they felt treated with compassion and were helped to manage their distress.
“This interim report also notes that most people who received follow-up support, experienced a reduction in their distress levels.
“I look forward to seeing the programme’s continued development.”