Describing the Prevnetion Network for the Suicide Attempters in Taipei City
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Liu, Ching-Yen
Abstract
For community social workers, it is challenging to serve suicide attempters. Frequently, social workers are not specialized in helping the suicide attempters who need in-depth counseling services. Most studies about suicide issues are in a quantitative way so far, and counseling services designed to help them are based on perspectives of medicine or counseling psychology. However, few studies focused on the network collaboration in helping attempters with economic difficulties in the community.
The method of this study is qualitative. By in-depth interviewing with three suicide attempters with economic needs and five network workers from the suicide prevention networks in Taipei City Government, the researcher described stories of how the suicide attempters seek help from the networks and the network workers provide help to them. Based on their narratives, this study discussed how the suicide prevention networks responded to the attempters’ needs and how the networks work together to help the attempters.
The findings of this study show that the suicide prevention network responded to the attempters with economic difficulties is not as straightforward and simplified as it was intended to help the attempters. First, the suicide prevention network in Taipei City Government included several service subsystems, however, mainly Social Welfare Service Center and Suicide Prevention Center. Each subsystem has its own working style in terms of institutional mission, working style, and working method. In operation, on the one side, the suicide attempters with economic difficulties preferred to seeking the help from community social workers in the Social Welfare Service Center, because they could receive actual economic benefits and counseling services. On the other side, the Social Welfare Service Center expected the Suicide Prevention Center played a key role in providing counseling services to the attempters, who however turned down counseling services from the latter Center. The Suicide Prevention Center expected the Social Welfare Service Center took care of the attempters in need of economic benefits. The two direct service systems did not collaborated with each other as the networks expected to do so due to lacking of communication and coordination.
The suggestions of this study are as following:
1.We need to improve the teamworkhip among networkers, adjust the professional relationship between professionals and suicide attempters, and build a teamwork culture to lessen the stress and burden on the workers.
2.To improve the professional ability of networkers and the consensus between systems, we need to advocate a specialized social work system in the Social Welfare Service Center to serve the suicide attempters.
3.For attempters with economic difficulties, case conference between subsystems is needed to improve collaboration and coordination in suicide prevention networks in Taipei City Government.
Subjects
suicide
suicide attempter
suicide prevention
network
collaboration
SDGs
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