Thankfully, most people who think about suicide don't act on their

thoughts, therefore, one of our challenges is to better understand who is at increased risk of attempting suicide or dying by suicide - so that we can help to keep as many people as safe as possible. To address this question, I developed the Integrated Motivational-Volitional Model (IMV) of suicidal behaviour which maps out the factors associated with the emergence of suicidal thinking and critically, those associated with an increased likelihood of acting on those thoughts by attempting/dying by suicide.  The IMV model describes a group of factors called volitional factors such as having access to the means to suicide, having someone close to you who has died by suicide, impulsivity, past history of self-harm and fearlessness about dying which are associated with increased risk of people acting on their thoughts of suicide. 

Here's a clip of me talking to the British Psychological Society about safety planning.

You can find more details about one of our studies (the MQ-Research-funded SAFETEL study) on safety planning here and in my new book When It is Darkest.

There are also very helpful resources on the Staying Safe website developed by 4 Mental Health.

Roman Kemp has also written an article on feeling trapped by depression. 

Professor Rory O'Connor

16th March 2021

(video added 17th March)

Covid-19: Mental health research and the pandemic response

by Rory O’Connor

On Friday 13^th March I was meant to fly to Australia.  But on advice from the University (not that I am superstitious) a couple of days beforehand, I had made the difficult decision to cancel my trip.  This was fortuitous for a couple of reasons; first, obviously, if I had flown I probably would have been quarantined on arrival. Second though, was that the following week, as concern about Covid-19 was growing, I got an email from Helen Munn, the CEO of MQ: Transforming Mental Health, the mental health research charity.  She had been consulting with MRC, Wellcome, ESRC and other organisations and she invited me to co-chair a group to rapidly pull together a Position Paper on the Covid-19 mental health science research priorities (in partnership with the Academy of Medical Sciences). She was responding to concern from within the research community that, without a coordinated effort, the mental health science response to Covid-19 may become fragmented.

As I was unexpectedly still in the UK, I agreed but didn’t quite know what I had let myself in for!  However, less than a month later, after daily author meetings, an intense period of writing, editing, consulting, and rapidly surveying 3,000 people with lived experience, the Position Paper was published on 15^th April in Lancet Psychiatry.  The long days and late nights and the tight turnaround were worth it, though. The Paper garnered global media coverage, it highlighted the importance of mitigating mental health risks and it has already started to inform the Covid-19 mental health and neuroscience research agenda in the UK.  Around the same time, I also became part of the Covid-19 International Suicide Research Collaboration. This initiative, led by David Gunnell (University of Bristol), is important because we know from other public health and economic crises that risk of suicide can increase in their aftermath. So we worked quickly to issue another Call for Action, also published in Lancet Psychiatry, to ensure that suicide prevention is given the urgent attention that it warrants.

Jack Melson and I, alongside Karen Wetherall, Seonaid Cleare and Cara Richardson have also been busy tailoring the Distress Brief Intervention (DBI), the Scottish Government’s flagship multi-agency response for people in distress, to be Covid-ready. In anticipation of the likely impact of Covid-19 on our mental health, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon made new funding available to extend this crisis-response service and roll it out nationally. We were charged with developing new training and intervention materials in light of Covid-19 which we had to turn around in record-quick-time. We are delighted to be able to play our part in the government’s mental health response; indeed the first referrals by this new DBI-Covid 19 service were made on the 13^th May – with plans for the service to go nationwide in June.

Finally, as part of the Scottish Government’s Academic Advisory Group on suicide prevention, Tiago Zortea is leading on a systematic review to explore the impact of public health emergencies on suicidal behaviour, suicidal thoughts and self-harm.  This is another collaborative effort; Tiago, Heather McClelland and I are working with Steve Platt (University of Edinburgh) and colleagues in Ireland and Canada to see what we can learn from previous emergencies. It is our hope that if we act now, we can mitigate suicide risk in the longer term.

A final reflection.  It is incredibly humbling and rewarding to work with such a dedicated group of people, both here at the University and well beyond. Everyone has a shared goal of trying to do whatever we can to help and protect the most vulnerable during this global COVID-19 pandemic, as we all navigate an uncertain future ahead together. 

22/05/20

Distress Brief Intervention programme wins prestigious Scottish Health Award

The national Distress Brief Intervention programme which is a partnership between a range of statutory and 3^rd sector organisations including the University of Glasgow received the Care for Mental Health award at the Scottish Health Awards event held in Edinburgh on the 14^th of November.

 

The Suicidal Behaviour Research Lab have the pleasure of hosting Associate Professor Matthew Spittal from the University of Melbourne, who will be talking on 3.30pm on Wednesday 25^th September, in Lecture room 2 at Lilybank Gardens (University of Glasgow). 

Identifying patients at high-risk of suicide: the problems and pitfalls of using predictive instruments to make treatment decisions

Tools for assessing suicide risk are widely used in the emergency department and other settings to identify people at high risk of suicide. This classification then often informs treatment decisions, such as whether to admit a person as a psychiatric inpatient. In this talk I (1) describe a program of research that has examined the clinical utility of these risk prediction instruments; (2) explain why these tools don’t work, and why in the era of big data and machine learning, better tools are unlikely to be developed; and (3) offer suggestions for how we can do better.

Biography

Matthew Spittal is an Associate Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is a biostatistician by training. His research program crosses several areas of public health. His main area of research is on the role of individual practitioner performance on patient safety and quality of care. He also studies the epidemiology of suicide and self-harm and is developing a new area of research on traffic safety.