Suchergebnisse

Objective: Suicide is a significant public and mental health crisis in the United States. Training providers in suicide assessment and response is designated as one of the primary strategies for reducing deaths by suicide. Research has established that suicide intervention training is effective, but little work has been published on potential mediators of skill development and use. Method: Secondary data analysis of a randomized trial of the Question, Persuade, and Refer gatekeeper training with master of social work students. Path analysis was used to estimate mediated effects of knowledge, attitudes, reluctance, and self-efficacy on behavior outcomes. Results: Results suggest improvements in posttraining measures for knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, reluctance, and the use of gatekeeper behaviors, but there was no supporting evidence for the presence of mediated effects on behavior. Only self-efficacy demonstrated a strong direct relationship with gatekeeper behaviors. Conclusions: Ongoing evaluation is needed with an added interest in self-efficacy and how it can be enhanced through training.

AbstractThis paper reports on the development and validation of a scale to measure supervision practice in human service agencies. Supervision in human services is designed to provide management, mediation, professional development, and personal support to workers. The Supervision Practices in Human Services scale (SPHS) captures a range of supervisory practices from productive to abusive behaviours. The SPHS had strong psychometric properties. It includes 23 items with four subscales (Leadership, Inattention, Unprofessional Modelling, Unethical Practice). The SPHS can be used to identify training needs for supervisors or identify where interventions are needed to stop harmful behaviour.

Purpose: Adolescent mental health is a public health priority. Considered an early intervention approach, Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) trains adults to provide initial assistance to adolescents experiencing a mental health problem or crisis. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the U.S. version of YMHFA (YMHFA-USA) among graduate social work students. Method: A quasi-experimental design ( N = 73; intervention, n = 39; comparison, n = 34), using the Mental Health Beliefs and Literacy Scale, assessed the effectiveness of YMHFA-USA. Outcomes were measured at pretest, posttest, and 5 months in the intervention group. Differences between groups were compared at 5 months. Results: Statistically significant improvements in attitudes, beliefs, self-confidence, and knowledge were observed among intervention group students. At 5 months, these students had significantly better attitudes and greater knowledge and self-confidence than the comparison group. Conclusion: Results indicate YMHFA-USA may improve factors related to master's level social work students' abilities to engage with youth experiencing mental health problems.