College of Social Work, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
Suicide Life Threat Behav. 2021 Aug;51(4):785-794. doi: 10.1111/sltb.12763. Epub 2021 May 17.
Law Enforcement Officers' (LEO) interactions with people facing mental health crises have risen exponentially since the era of deinstitutionalization. On average, about 10% of the individuals law enforcement interacts with daily have mental health challenges. Several factors influence the outcome of these interactions, not least of which is an officer's role as a gatekeeper as well as their training related to people with mental health challenges. We hypothesized that participating in the online QPR Training for Law Enforcement Officers would be associated with improved knowledge about suicide, attitudes to suicide and suicide intervention, and self-efficacy. Additionally, we hypothesized that these outcomes would be associated with greater use of intervention skills when encountering individuals at risk for suicide in the community. Results of our longitudinal analysis find that most of the participating officers reported some prior training and yet demonstrated statistically significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes after controlling for previous training. No significant changes were observed in LEO's use of intervention skills following training. We conclude by suggesting that there is substantial need for increased training; and offering possible conceptual and empirical explanations for the observed results.
自去机构化时代以来，执法人员与面临心理健康危机的人之间的互动呈指数级增长。平均而言，执法人员每天与之互动的大约 10%的人都面临心理健康挑战。有几个因素会影响这些互动的结果，其中最重要的是警官作为把关人的角色以及他们与心理健康挑战人士相关的培训。我们假设，参与针对执法人员的在线 QPR 培训将与以下方面相关：提高对自杀的认识、对自杀的态度和自杀干预，以及自我效能感。此外，我们假设这些结果与在社区中遇到有自杀风险的个人时更广泛地使用干预技能相关。我们的纵向分析结果发现，大多数参与的警官报告了一些之前的培训，但在控制之前的培训后，他们在知识和态度方面表现出了统计学上的显著改善。培训后，执法人员使用干预技能的情况没有明显变化。最后，我们认为需要增加培训，并为观察到的结果提供可能的概念和经验解释。
