The role of nursing in suicide prevention

According to the Institute of National Statistics (INE), last year 20 people took their own lives in Ávila, reason enough to speak from the perspective of the “closest” healthcare workers at a round table to be held on Tuesday in the San Francisco auditorium.

It is necessary to talk about suicide and especially about prevention in this regard and the need to “develop and apply formulas that detect suicidal behaviour early,” says Enrique Ruiz Forner, president of the Avila school organisation. We refer to these statements because on October 10, a round table on the matter will be held in Ávila from the perspective of nursing or, in other words, from the vision of health workers who accompany people throughout their lives and in the face of a problem that is increasing and that is “a scourge that shows serious growth in recent years, with 246 suicides in Castilla y León in 2022 according to the INE and 20 of them in Ávila (16 men and four women)”.

Under these premises, the Professional College of Nursing and the Spanish Association of Mental Health Nursing commemorate World Mental Health Day in Ávila in order to study prevention protocols. For nurses, there is no doubt that because we are the closest “we have to be able to develop and apply formulas that detect suicidal behaviour early,” says Ruiz Forner.

For all these reasons, the round table will take place on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 10, which is scheduled at 5 p.m. in the San Francisco Auditorium, located on calle Valladolid and with free entry. It is estimated to last about two hours.

And it is a fact that nursing is key in prevention through the early detection of self-harming behaviours.

The organisers trust that “the experience will serve so that numerous professionals in the world of nursing, but also all those interested in the subject, can learn about the protocols and initiatives developed by those organisations that expressly work on the detection and prevention of suicide, as well as different entities that are especially aware of the incidence of these autolytic behaviours in society.

It is a fact that the numbers of suicides and self-harm attempts have increased “especially after the pandemic caused by Covid-19, the consequences of which we are still suffering.” At this point they argue that “anxiety situations caused by social isolation, but also hopelessness, the economic and work situation, the level of stress to which the population is subjected and depression, favour the appearance of self-harm attempts,” says Ruiz Forner.

“Sometimes people enter a harmful and unhealthy spiral that leads to cases of drug addiction, alcoholism… But we must also monitor the appearance of this type of behaviour at very early ages, in children, where we know more and more about situations. abuse limit. In all these cases, Nursing is the health profession closest to the person.”

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