Patients who have attempted suicide are too often treated with hostility by hospital emergency department staff, senior Australian psychiatrists have said, meaning opportunities to prevent future harm are being missed.
A study from the mental health charity Sane Australia and the University of New England released on Thursday found people who have attempted suicide reported being discharged too early or having difficulty being admitted to hospitals.
Researchers interviewed 31 people from around Australia who had made an attempt on their life, with 80% describing their experience in hospital as negative and nearly one-third feeling they were not taken seriously.
“People often try to get help, usually after considerable trauma which is difficult to talk about,” Sane’s suicide prevention manager, Sarah Coker, said. “It can be really distressing if, when they finally reach out, they are misunderstood or discharged quickly.”
Pat McGorry, professor of youth mental health at the University of Melbourne and executive director of mental health program Orygen Youth Health, said part of the problem was that emergency departments were inherently non-therapeutic environments.
[For more of this story, written by Melissa Davey, go to http://www.theguardian.com/soc...d-suicide-says-study]
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