Graduate programs should provide more help for trainees whose patients commit suicide, a study suggests

One in six psychology interns will experience the trauma of a patient committing suicide, studies indicate. But many training programs apparently fail to provide appropriate therapy or other adequate support for them, new research shows.

Thomas Ellis, PsyD, and Thomas Dickey, MD, of the West Virginia University School of Medicine, collected survey responses from 247 psychology training programs and 166 psychiatric residency programs. They found that procedures for dealing with the suicide of a trainee?s patient are lacking.

In the case of a patient suicide, most programs (61 percent of the psychology programs and 54 percent of the psychiatry programs) required trainees to follow a reporting procedure, such as filing a formal incident report.

But less than half the psychology programs recommended therapy or counseling for trainees, and only 8 percent required such therapy. Psychiatry programs reported similar trends, with 42 percent recommending therapy and only 5 percent requiring it.

The findings should raise concerns since previous research shows that after a patient suicide, therapists in training may undergo more stress than experienced professionals would, Ellis and Dickey write in the latest issue of the APA journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (Vol. 29, No. 5, p. 492?497).

Many supervisors worry that their debriefings with trainees who lose patients to suicide could eventually be subpoenaed in a malpractice suit, the authors note.

But no legal precedent exists to suggest that will occur, they say. And fear of litigation is an insufficient reason to disregard the emotional needs of trainees struggling with such tragedies, they add.

?S. Sleek