Correlates of primary care doctors' attitudes toward suicide

Background: Recent studies have shown that people, who have had a high exposure to suicide, tend to be more tolerant of suicide in general. We anticipate that among some other variables a higher number of suicides in a primary health care practice may be associated with more lenient doctors' attitudes toward suicide. Objectives: The main objective of this study was to explore correlates of primary care doctors' attitudes toward suicide and toward the people who commit suicide. Method: We prepared a questionnaire on attitudes toward suicide, asking primary care doctors about different aspects of understanding suicide and describing a typical person who commits suicide. Correlations between attitudes and potential predictors, e.g. age, sex, recency of a patient's suicide, number of suicides in a practice, and doctors' years of practice, were examined. Results: Results from the study showed that professionals' attitudes toward suicide in Slovenia are influenced by doctors' age, years of practice and number of patient suicides. Conclusion: Some educational programme will be needed to tackle attitudes regarding suicide and suicidal behaviour. Primary care doctors in Slovenia, where they tend to be faced with one suicide in their practice per year, could greatly benefit from such a programme. Language: en