Protective factors in the male infantry against suicide.

I am currently a Mental Health Nurse and Officer in the British Army. Since being a nursing student I have always had an interest in suicide prevention having delivered care to patients who had attempted suicide, this has continued into my post qualification work. Since qualifying in 2004 until joining the Army in 2009, I have had the opportunity to be part of the implementation of Assessment Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) in HM Prisons. ACCT training involved a mental health nurse delivering mental health recognition training and suicide awareness to prison officers that have contact with the prisoners. I have supported officers in making decisions about risk, management and the need for other intervention. The interventions that I offered were both evidence based and a necessity in an environment where there was not 24 hour nursing cover. Nor was there immediate transfer to inpatient services. This allowed me to utilise a broad range of skills and engage with the Prison Officers that need to deliver the care required to maintain the prisoner safety until other arrangements could be made.

Since joining the Army, I was given the opportunity to represent the British Armed Forces at a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Research Task Group on suicide prevention in the Armed Forces (RTG-218). The opportunity to sit as the UK Armed Forces representative on a suicide focused research task group has been a chance for me to further enhance my skills in both academic understanding and to look at an issue that is of interest to me. This has fostered my interest in considering the potential impact that attempted and completed suicide might have on the career of Service personnel. There may be an effect on unit cohesion and work colleagues’ and friends and family. This interest helped me focus on exploring issues that may be associated with protective factors in the British Army in the hope that this will inform future work on this area. I was awarded a Nightingale Scholarship and sponsored by the Band Trust which has funded my studies for the first year.

Background- I am re-assigned every two years during my Service and have spent time in Catterick, Northern Ireland and am currently in Donnington, (Telford). I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 to deliver mental health services as part of a nurse led, three-person team. My main roles are the delivery of mental health services, which occupationally manage Service personnel, and the education of commanders, ensuring that the Service personnel who have psychological issues are effectively managed and are not re-exposed to psychological stressors during treatment. This involves direct liaison with senior personnel within the Military environment; it is both a rewarding and humbling role.

This report shows a sample of the work that I have completed in the past year. The first chapter starts by introducing a model to understand suicidal behaviours and introduces the literature on suicidal behaviours in the general population. The literature identified that suicides (Hines et al 2013) and intentional self-harm (Pinder et al 2012) is lower  in the Armed Forces than the general population. This gives consideration and focus to what it is about being a member of the Armed Forces that protects people from suicide.

The second chapter shows the taught models completed as part of a PhD at the University of Manchester and the internal and external conferences attended as well as presentations made as a consequence of this work. The third chapter introduces a proposed protocol for theresearch design if this project were to continue. The final chapter shows the considerations for the future and the lesson learnt to dates. Following completion of my first year, I will not continue with the project as literature search had made it clear that there would not be the power to undertake a robust study; in fact it appears that being in the military reduces the risk of suicide and self-harm compared to the general population of the UK. However it has been successful in raising an awareness of suicide prevention in the Armed forces. It has also supported the work that I have completed within the NATO RTG.