Cross-cultural generalizability of suicide first aid actions: an analysis of agreement across expert consensus studies from a range of countries and cultures

Individuals in a suicidal person’s social network have the potential to take action that may reduce the risk of suicide. Because it is not feasible to carry out trials in which family and friends are randomly allocated to carry out specific actions to assist a suicidal person, expert consensus has been used to determine what are likely to be helpful actions in this area. This approach involves systematically gathering ‘practice-based evidence’ using the Delphi method, based on experts’ professional and/or personal experience [1]. It accords with ‘wisdom of crowds’ research showing that, under certain conditions, groups of individuals who each have imperfect expertise can make good decisions when their expertise is aggregated [1].

In the initial Delphi study on this topic, Kelly and colleagues [2] did a systematic search of advice on how to assist a suicidal person and used this to construct a questionnaire of 114 statements. This questionnaire was presented to a panel of 22 professionals and 16 people with lived experience (they had been suicidal or had cared for someone who had been suicidal in the past) who were from developed English-speaking countries. There were 30 items which were endorsed at a high level by both panels and these were used to produce guidelines on mental health first aid for suicidal ideation and behavior. These guidelines were subsequently used to inform the content of a Mental Health First Aid training course which has been widely disseminated [3]. The guidelines were also made available for free download online, and a survey of people who downloaded them found that some users made positive use of the guidelines to assist a suicidal person [4].

A new Delphi study was later carried out in order to update these guidelines [5]. A systematic search led to development of a questionnaire with 436 items about knowledge or actions to assist a suicidal person. These items were rated by panels of 42 suicide prevention professionals and 35 consumer advocates from developed English-speaking countries, and 164 items were endorsed at a high level. The items cover identification of suicide risk, assessing the seriousness of risk, initial assistance, talking with the suicidal person, no-suicide contracts, what the first aider should know, confidentiality and adolescent-specific considerations. The resulting updated mental health first aid guidelines for suicidal thoughts and behaviours were used to revise the content of Mental Health First Aid training [6–9]. More recently, the guidelines have been used as the basis of a special training course on Mental Health First Aid for the Suicidal Person [10]. These guidelines for the public differ from clinical practice guidelines for general practitioners and psychiatrists in that they do not involve formal assessment of clinical state, diagnostic labels or treatment plans [11, 12].

Because there may be cultural factors that affect provision of assistance by family, friends and other helpers [13], the Delphi studies on suicide first aid [2, 5] only used experts from developed English-speaking countries. However, the authors cautioned that: “The application of the guidelines to non-western cultures and ethnic minorities is an area requiring further investigation and consultation with suicide prevention experts from these cultural and ethnic backgrounds” [5].

Because of the potential cultural differences in how to best assist a suicidal person, a series of Delphi studies has also been carried out with professional experts in a number of Asian countries, using the questionnaires of either of the English-speaking country Delphi studies as a starting point [2, 5], but supplemented with additional items relevant to the specific culture. These studies have been carried out for India [14], Japan [15], Philippines [16] and Sri Lanka [17]. Cultural differences may also be important for ethnic minority groups within countries [18, 19]. For this reason, a Delphi study has also been carried out on assisting suicidal persons from refugee and immigrant backgrounds [20].

While a culturally-specific approach to developing suicide first aid guidelines might be the ideal, it is resource intensive and would be a major task to implement for every potential cultural group in the world. The aim of the present study is to explore the feasibility of having cross-culturally generalizable suicide first aid guidelines. The study does this by comparing the endorsement rates of expert panels from the various existing Delphi studies to see whether there are common actions recommended across all the studies, and also across the three lower-middle income countries specifically. The study also quantifies the degree of agreement across expert panels from the various cultural groups.

Comparison of items endorsed across all Delphi studies shows a number of actions that are recommended across a broad range of countries and cultures. These cover assessing the risk of suicide, listening to the person, showing care and respect, and ensuring the person’s safety. A notable omission from these items is recommendations to refer the person to professional help. This omission may reflect the fact that items about professional help-seeking were not consistently included across the various Delphi questionnaires. It might also reflect limitations in the availability or feasibility of professional help in some countries, where services like suicide hotlines are not always available and mental health services can be scarce, particularly in rural areas. Thus, the list of items that were endorsed across studies should be regarded as a minimal cross-cultural consensus rather than exhaustive.

We also specifically examined actions that were endorsed across the three lower-middle-income countries (India, Philippines and Sri Lanka), which resulted in a larger pool of common items, indicating the feasibility of developing guidelines that might be generalizable to a broader group of low- and middle-income countries. Although additional items were endorsed in the three lower-middle-income countries, these may not necessarily reflect cultural differences between these countries and the rest. It may instead be due to the fact that it is easier to get consistent endorsement across three expert panels than across eight panels.

Despite these commonalities, there were also a number of differences between panels For example, the English-speaking and Japan panels were less likely to endorse attempting to dissuade the person from suicide or attempt to solve their problems than were panelists from the lower-middle-income countries or the immigrant and refugee panels. This could partially be explained by the fact that the lower-middle income countries in these studies are generally considered collectivistic societies, i.e. people are expected to look after each other (e.g. helping to solve one’s problems). Furthermore, in English-speaking countries and more ‘westernized’ societies such as Japan the bio-medical model of suicide, which attributes suicidal behavior to mental illness, is widespread and as a consequence an individual might see him/herself as unable to ‘solve the problem’, as this requires the intervention of a mental health professional or other health/medical professional [13]. There were also differences between panels in endorsement rates that may reflect variation in willingness of panel member to state firm views on the items. Cultural differences were also reported in the original Delphi studies. For example, in the Filipino study it was noted that religious and spiritual concepts appear to be more important in suicide prevention than in India or Japan [16]. By contrast, in the Japanese study it was noted that the experts were less likely to endorse actions that involved a closer personal distance and that some first aid strategies highly endorsed in other countries might be seen as socially inappropriate in Japan [15]. In the Refugee and Immigrant study, it was noted that refugees and immigrants sometimes have a fear and distrust about emergency services and that females from some cultural backgrounds may not be permitted to make decisions regarding their own health alone [20]. Availability of services is another culturally varying factor. For example, in the Sri Lankan study the lack of services in rural areas was noted [17].

Developing separate suicide first aid guidelines for each cultural group is the ideal. As well as providing specific cultural tailoring, it provides buy-in from the target cultural group by involving relevant experts at an early stage. However, to do this for every country, including for cultural minority groups within a country, is very resource intensive. It can also be difficult to recruit lived-experience experts from cultural groups that lack consumer advocacy organizations, which was the case with the Asian Delphi studies included here.

The alternative is to develop guidelines based on the consensus of experts from a broader range of cultural groups, including lived-experience experts where they are available. These broader guidelines may then be supplemented by expert consensus guidelines on additional cultural considerations that are specific to the target group. For example, this approach has been used to develop guidelines on additional considerations when giving mental health first aid (which includes suicide first aid) to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adolescents [22], Iraqi refugees [23] and LGBTIQ people [24]. These additional cultural considerations have then been incorporated in Mental Health First Aid training [7, 9].

While this study has involved only suicide first aid guidelines, the findings may have implications for the broader development of mental health first aid guidelines for assisting a person developing a mental health problem or in a mental health crisis [25–33]. While previous research has sought the expertise of professionals, consumer advocates and carer advocates from developed English-speaking countries, it may be feasible to develop mental health first aid guidelines that have broader applicability, for example to high-income countries or to low- and middle-income countries, which can then be supplemented by consensus on local cultural and health system considerations.