Suicide reporting system
People in contact with mental health services do complete
suicide. The numbers are small but the effects devastating for
relatives, friends and the staff involved. When a suicide takes
place, great care must be taken to understand what happened and to
learn from any lessons identified. It is also important to use
those lessons to improve services and help staff recognise where
risk exists. Suicide reviews are the way that mental health
services analyse what happened and recognise where anything can be
done to make things safer for other people at risk.
The Healthcare Improvement Scotland Suicide
Reporting System has been set up to assist NHS boards improve the
way that suicide reviews are carried out and help reduce risk. The
Suicide Reporting System aims to do this by:
- using improvement methodologies to improve
the effectiveness of suicide reviews
- sharing nationally lessons learned from
suicide reviews and innovative risk reduction actions taken within
mental health services (through our quarterly Learning &
Improvement Review)
- promoting through the Suicide Review Team
Network sharing of experience and peer support among mental health
services
- regularly producing commentary on the suicide
reports received, and
- contributing to national suicide reduction
initiatives.
Please see the SRS Process section for further
information on how NHS boards report to the Suicide Reporting
System and the protocols followed.
Please see our list of Downloads for further
information on the Suicide Reporting System.
You can contact the team on hcis.SuicideReviewTeam@nhs.net,
or 0131 623 4374.
There is a key contact at each NHS board who
is responsible for submitting notifications and completed review
reports. If you do not know who your key contact is, feel free to
contact us.
Please ensure notifications and completed
review reports are addressed as follows:
Strictly Private &
Confidential
Suicide Reporting Officer
Healthcare Improvement Scotland
FREEPOST SCO5432
Edinburgh
EH7 0BR
Published Date: 1 April 2011
