Needs of parents supporting children after suicide-related emergency

Young people experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviours may present to hospital emergency departments for support. Parents accompanying children in these situations play a key role in supporting their child’s wellbeing which can negatively impact on their own wellbeing.

Demee Rheinberger, researcher at Black Dog Institute and the Tyree Foundation Institute of Health Engineering at the University of New South Wales shares the findings from her recent research Exploring parent support needs during and after adolescent suicide-related emergency department visits.

Parents play a key role in assisting their adolescent to access crisis care such as EDs, and ongoing community mental healthcare. Previous research I was involved in demonstrated that adolescent suicide crisis and the related ED presentation significantly impacted parents’ identity and left them feeling unable to protect and care for their child.

Worryingly, parents have reported feeling inappropriately supported to provide the critical life sustaining care their child needs after ED discharge.

For this research we used a mixed methods approach to understand what types of support parents need as a result of the ED presentation. Twenty interviews were conducted with parents of young people aged 12-18 years old who had attended an Australian ED for suicide crisis since January 2018.

The findings indicated that parents wanted:

• Information about and active involvement in the ED care of their child
• Information about how to keep their adolescent safe and support recovery, and
• Tools to support their own wellbeing.

This data was used to develop online surveys to better understand the tools and information parents were seeking, which was completed by 163 parents.

Most parents who completed the survey indicated they wanted information about how to support their adolescent through the suicide crisis.

Results of the survey also found that only 55% of parents were provided an opportunity to speak with ED staff about their concerns, and only 25% were spoken to about how to care for their adolescent after discharge. This left many parents wanting more information about how to care for their child after discharge from the ED.

This is the first study to examine the support parents receive from EDs when presenting for suicide crisis and provides a preliminary outline of the support parents need and what resources require development to educate and support parents. It demonstrates a large gap between what parents would consider helpful to receive in Australian EDs, and what support they are actually receiving. These findings provide an opportunity to guide ED reform and to develop resources which support parents to care for their adolescent children during and immediately following a suicide crisis. Improving the way in which parents are supported to care for their adolescent may help reduce repeated suicide attempts in young people.