Nursing students’ attitude toward suicide prevention

BACKGROUND: Preventing suicide depends upon different health professionals’ knowledge regarding suicide, attitude toward suicide attempters, skills to assess and manage suicidal risk. OBJECTIVES: This study was aimed to assess the attitude of nursing students toward suicide prevention. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 308 nursing students were recruited from the two institutions through total enumeration method. Attitude toward suicide prevention scale was administered. Study design was cross-sectional. RESULTS: Majority were single females, from urban locality, who were pursuing BSc Nursing with the mean age of 20 years. Only minority had previous exposure to suicide prevention programs or workshops. Nearly half of the subjects had positive attitude toward working with suicidal patients. Again half of the subjects considered unemployment and poverty as main causes of suicide and were quite hopeless about it and they also perceived that most of the suicidal people would not reveal their suicidal plans to others. CONCLUSIONS: Merely half of the students had positive attitude toward working with suicidal patients. Hence, there is strong need to organize more educational and training programs on suicide prevention so that these budding health professionals could be more equipped and trained to manage these suicidal patients.