Neuroscience
Every year in the UK, 150,000 people attend Accident and Emergency (A&E) having deliberately harmed themselves. These are vulnerable people, up to five per cent of whom, based on current rates, will have committed suicide within five to ten years. The staff at A&E are often the only professional contact these patients will have. Yet evidence suggests self-harm patients are unpopular among A&E staff, and in a recent survey self-harm patients rated medical personnel as providing the most unsatisfactory support.
Nadine Mackay and Christine Barrowclough investigated what factors might influence an A&E nurse or doctor’s willingness to help someone who has self-harmed. Eighty-nine A&E nurses and junior doctors working in the Manchester region responded by questionnaire to short accounts about fictitious self-harm patients.
Overall, where self-harming followed an event the A&E staff deemed controllable (e.g. financial problems), they subsequently reported feeling less sympathetic and less willing to help, compared with when it followed an uncontrollable event (e.g. bereavement). The staff also reported feeling less optimistic about patients who had attended A&E after self-harming for the sixth time, compared with patients attending for the first time, and this reduced optimism was associated with less willingness to help.
Doctors reported feeling more irritated by, and less willing to help self-harm patients than did nurses. They also felt less need than nurses for extra training. Male doctors and nurses were also less sympathetic and less willing to help than female staff.
Acknowledging the danger of extrapolating from responses to fictitious accounts, the researchers concluded that A&E staff could benefit from extra training in the management of self-harm patients. “This might be aimed at encouraging staff to examine and challenge their beliefs about the causes of deliberate self-harm and the value of support and treatment that can be provided”, they said.
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Mackay, N., Barrowclough, C. (2005). Accident and emergency staff’s perceptions of deliberate self-harm: attributions, emotions and willingness to help. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44, 255-267.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
The attitude of casualty staff towards self-harm
Every year in the UK, 150,000 people attend Accident and Emergency (A&E) having deliberately harmed themselves. These are vulnerable people, up to five per cent of whom, based on current rates, will have committed suicide within five to ten years. The staff at A&E are often the only professional contact these patients will have. Yet evidence suggests self-harm patients are unpopular among A&E staff, and in a recent survey self-harm patients rated medical personnel as providing the most unsatisfactory support.
Nadine Mackay and Christine Barrowclough investigated what factors might influence an A&E nurse or doctor’s willingness to help someone who has self-harmed. Eighty-nine A&E nurses and junior doctors working in the Manchester region responded by questionnaire to short accounts about fictitious self-harm patients.
Overall, where self-harming followed an event the A&E staff deemed controllable (e.g. financial problems), they subsequently reported feeling less sympathetic and less willing to help, compared with when it followed an uncontrollable event (e.g. bereavement). The staff also reported feeling less optimistic about patients who had attended A&E after self-harming for the sixth time, compared with patients attending for the first time, and this reduced optimism was associated with less willingness to help.
Doctors reported feeling more irritated by, and less willing to help self-harm patients than did nurses. They also felt less need than nurses for extra training. Male doctors and nurses were also less sympathetic and less willing to help than female staff.
Acknowledging the danger of extrapolating from responses to fictitious accounts, the researchers concluded that A&E staff could benefit from extra training in the management of self-harm patients. “This might be aimed at encouraging staff to examine and challenge their beliefs about the causes of deliberate self-harm and the value of support and treatment that can be provided”, they said.
__________________________________
Mackay, N., Barrowclough, C. (2005). Accident and emergency staff’s perceptions of deliberate self-harm: attributions, emotions and willingness to help. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44, 255-267.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- What Are Teens Hoping To Feel When They Self-harm?
The number of teenagers deliberately hurting themselves is on the increase. For example, the latest data for England show that over 13,000 15- to 19-year-old girls and 4,000 boys were admitted to hospital for this reason in the 12-month period up to June...
- Patients On Secure Wards Are More Likely To Be Aggressive Towards Staff Of Their Own Sex
Secure ward managers may be able to reduce patient aggression by carefully monitoring the sex ratio of the staff relative to the patients. That's according to Susan Knowles and colleagues who've found that mental health patients held on a medium...
- Would You Kill One Person To Save The Lives Of Others?
Are morals based on facts and knowledge, or are they grounded in emotions? In other words, if you programmed a computer with the right information, would it make the same moral judgements as a person? 'No', is the answer suggested by new research...
- Who Doesn't Suffer From Paranoia?
Can you honestly say that alone on a dimly lit street you've never wondered if those footsteps behind are the sound of someone following you? Increasingly, psychologists are recognising that many of the thoughts and experiences, such as paranoia,...
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“Mental illnesses are biologically based brain disorders” - that's the bold proclamation made by The National Alliance on Mental Illness and many other campaign groups. No doubt, one intention of such proclamations is to reduce the stigma associated...