- Title
- Mechanisms of brief contact interventions in clinical populations: a systematic review
- Creator
- Milner, Allison; Spittal, Matthew J.; Kapur, Nav; Witt, Katrina; Pirkis, Jane; Carter, Greg
- Relation
- BMC Psychiatry Vol. 16, Issue 1
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12888-016-0896-4
- Publisher
- BioMed Central
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Background: Brief Contact Interventions (BCIs) have been of increasing interest to suicide prevention clinicians, researchers and policy makers. However, there has been no systematic assessment into the mechanisms underpinning BCIs. The aim of the current paper is to provide a systematic review of the proposed mechanisms underpinning BCIs across trial studies. Method: A systematic review was conducted of trials using BCIs (post-discharge telephone contacts; emergency or crisis cards; and postcard or letter contacts) for suicide or self-harm. Following PRISMA guidelines, we searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the reference lists of all past reviews in the area. Secondary searches of reference lists were undertaken. Results: Sixteen papers provided a description of possible mechanisms which we grouped into three main areas: social support; suicide prevention literacy, and; learning alternative coping behaviours. After assessment of the studies and considering the plausibility of mechanisms, we suggest social support and improved suicide prevention literacy are the most likely mechanisms underpinning BCIs. Conclusion: Researchers need to better articulate and measure the mechanisms they believe underpin BCIs in trial studies. Understanding more about the mechanisms of BCIs' will inform the development of future interventions for self-harm and suicide.
- Subject
- brief contact interventions; self-harm; suicide; social support; help seeking; postcard; letters; phone calls; emergency department
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1324077
- Identifier
- uon:24955
- Identifier
- ISSN:1471-244X
- Rights
- © 2016 The Author(s). Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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