Tania Pearce

Background: Suicide bereavement refers to the grief experienced by individuals who have lost a close contact to suicide. It is often characterized by intense emotional distress, feelings of guilt, stigma, and social isolation, and may increase the risk of mental health problems and suicidal behavior. As research on suicide bereavement and postvention continues to expand globally, there is a growing need to map its development systematically and identify key trends. Aims: This study aimed to describe patterns in published literature on suicide bereavement and postvention through a global bibliometric analysis. Method: Systematic searches in eight databases (Web of Science; Scopus; CINAHL; PsycINFO; MEDLINE; Embase; Emcare; APA PsycArticles) yielded 49,386 references. After deduplication and screening, 1,072 articles published between 1953 and 2025 were included. Eligible peer-reviewed publications included empirical research, evidence syntheses (systematic reviews, scoping reviews, meta-analyses) and nonempirical publications (such as opinion pieces, and personal experiences). There were no restrictions on language, location, or year of publication. Results: The 1,072 eligible publications demonstrated a steady increase in suicide bereavement/postvention publications annually. 95% of publications were by first authors from high-income countries, while 1.3% of first authors were from lower-middle-income and low-income countries. Most studies were empirical and followed a quantitative or qualitative design, primarily cross-sectional, increasing over the years, while nonempirical publications declined. We identified few longitudinal or interventional studies. Populations sampled most frequently were working-age adults, with few studies focused on older adults. Limitations: The results provide little information about the methodological quality of the included studies. Some full texts could not be found and were unavailable for data extraction. Conclusion: The research gaps identified suggest that future studies should focus on underrepresented populations as well as on high-quality intervention studies to address adverse outcomes among suicide loss survivors.

Introduction: Lived experience inclusion is considered best practice in suicide prevention activities. Despite this, research remains limited exploring how individuals with lived experience actively engage in suicide research and prevention activities. The current scoping review aimed to map and summarise the existing literature describing the ‘how’ of lived experience participation in Australia.Methods: A scoping review according to the methodology of Arksey and O'Malley (2005) was undertaken with descriptive (e.g., study aims and methodology) and descriptive analytic data (such as key definitions and participation descriptors) being extracted from included studies.Results: A total of 42 studies met the inclusion criteria and were published between 2016 and 2023. There were many gaps in the data extracted, with participation descriptors and definitions often not reported in the literature. The included studies lacked clear and consistent definitions and practices when involving people with lived experience.Conclusion: Current processes for reporting experiences of lived experience participation in suicide prevention lack standardisation within peer‐reviewed publications. This review notes that there are gaps in the literature; however, the evidence base is growing for research that reports on suicide prevention research and activities that involve people with lived experience.Patient or Public Contribution: This study was created and undertaken by a PhD candidate with lived experience of thoughts of suicide, suicide attempt and caring for a loved one through suicide. A further team member has lived experience of being a suicide attempt survivor, continued thoughts of suicide and carer of family with suicidal thoughts. The study was informed by a Community Advisory Committee, of which four members have lived experience of suicide, with the remaining two having lived experience in areas where inclusion is paramount such as disability and suicide research. Ethics approval was not required for the participation of the Community Advisory Committee as they were providing advice only on the research conduct.

Introduction: Student‐led clinics can provide health services to marginalised groups where service offerings are sparse or difficult to access, such as rural areas. Offering these services to children and young people can promote health and well‐being by addressing the individual challenges and the social determinants of health. There is uncertainty, however, as to whether student‐led clinics can meet Australian accreditation standards for health professionals completing degree programs.Objective: This study aims to determine the capacity for health student placements in school‐based student‐led clinics to meet accreditation standards.Design: A systematic scoping review was conducted based on Arksey and O'Malley's framework and the PRISMA‐ScR statement.Setting: Several databases were examined, including Ebsco (Academic Source and CINAHL), ProQuest (PsycINFO, ERIC) and grey literature sources along with a desktop review of accreditation standards across seven health disciplines. Two independent reviewers screened eligible studies.Findings: The search retrieved 1037 records with 65 full‐text papers assessed for eligibility. Eleven papers met the inclusion criteria. Based on the evidence, both nursing and exercise and sports science accreditation standards were best suited to student‐led clinics.Discussion: Although broad categories of work‐integrated learning activities were applied, it appears feasible to expect accreditation standards for health disciplines at an Australian university to be a good fit for health student‐led school‐based clinics.Conclusion: Increasing health student placement opportunities within student‐led clinics can improve the health and well‐being of children and young people in regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas of Australia who may otherwise have limited access to allied health services.

Background: In Australia, the collaborative involvement of stakeholders, especially those with lived experience in mental health and suicide prevention, has become important to government policy and practice at Federal and State levels. However, little is known about how governments translate this intention into frameworks of co-creation for policy, funding programs, service improvement, and research and evaluation. We investigated the extent to which publicly available government policies refer to collaborative practice using an established translation model. Methods: An exploratory directed and summative content analysis approach was used to analyse the contents of Federal (also known as Commonwealth), State and Territories policy documents on mental health and suicide prevention published in Australia between 2010 and 2021. The data was extracted, compared to an existing translation model, and summated to demonstrate the evidence of co-creation-related concepts between government and stakeholders. Results: 40 policy documents (nine at the Federal and 31 at the State and Territory level) were identified and included in the analysis. Only 63% of policy documents contained references to the concept of co-design. Six of the State policies contained references to the concept of co-production. Across all policy documents, there were no references to other concepts in the model adopted for this study, such as co-creation, co-ideation, co-implementation, and co-evaluation. Conclusion: Although the government at Federal, State and Territory levels appear to support collaborative practice through partnership and co-design, this study suggests a narrow approach to the theoretical model for co-creation at a policy level. Implications for both research and practice are discussed.

Brief contact interventions are an efficient and cost-effective way of providing support to individuals. Whether they are an effective bereavement intervention is not clear. This systematic review included articles from 2014 to 2021.711 studies were identified, with 15 meeting inclusion criteria. The brief contact interventions included informational and emotional supports. Narrative synthesis identified that participants valued brief contact interventions, however some did not find them helpful. Exposure to a brief contact intervention was typically associated with improvements in wellbeing. Studies with comparison groups typically found significant but modest improvements in grief, depression symptoms and wellbeing associated with the intervention. However, one intervention was associated with significant deterioration of depression symptoms. Existing brief contact interventions for bereavement appear feasible, generally acceptable to the target population and are associated with improvements in wellbeing. Further development and evaluation to account for why improvements occur, and to identify any unintended impacts, is required.

Psychoeducational groups have been used to address many health needs. Yet, there are few such options available for people who have attempted suicide. This study presents preliminary findings from an open trial of Eclipse, an 8-week closed, psychoeducational group for people who have attempted suicide. It examined the effectiveness of the Eclipse program in reducing suicidal ideation, depressive symptoms, perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, and increasing resilience and help-seeking. Results showed statistically significant improvements in depressive symptoms, perceived burdensomeness, resilience and help-seeking from baseline (T1) to immediate post-test (T2), and in perceived burdensomeness from T1 to 1-month follow-up (T3). A pervasiveness analysis showed that over half of the participants reported improvements in key study outcomes, respectively, as a result of participating in the Eclipse group. Psychoeducational support groups could provide broad application for those who have previously attempted suicide in decreasing severity of suicidal thinking by reductions in depressive symptoms, burdensomeness, and thwarted belongingness.

Background: Governments and third-sector organizations (TSOs) require support to reduce suicide mortality through funding of suicide prevention services and innovative research. One way is for researchers to engage individuals and services in multisectoral collaborations, to collaboratively design, develop and test suicide prevention services and programmes. However, despite widespread support, to date, it remains unclear as to the extent to which stakeholders are being included in the research process, or if they are, how these partnerships occur in practice. To address this gap, the authors conducted a systematic review with the aim of identifying evidence of multisectoral collaborations within the field of suicide prevention, the types of stakeholders involved and their level of involvement. Methods: The authors conducted a strategic PRISMA-compliant search of five electronic databases to retrieve literature published between January 2008 and July 2021. Hand-searching of reference lists of key systematic reviews was also completed. Of the 7937 papers retrieved, 16 papers finally met the inclusion criteria. Because of data heterogeneity, no meta-analysis was performed; however, the methodological quality of the included studies was assessed. Results: Only one paper included engagement of stakeholders across the research cycle (co-ideation, co-design, co-implementation and co-evaluation). Most stakeholders were represented by citizens or communities, with only a small number of TSOs involved in multisectoral collaborations. Stakeholder level of involvement focused on the co-design or co-evaluation stage. Conclusion: This review revealed a lack of evidence of multisectoral collaborations being established between researchers and stakeholders in the field of suicide prevention research, even while such practice is being espoused in government policies and funding guidelines. Of the evidence that is available, there is a lack of quality studies documenting the collaborative research process. Also, results showed that the inclusion of co-researchers from communities or organizations is defined as co-creation, but further analysis revealed that collaboration was not consistent across the duration of projects. Researchers and practitioners should consider issues of power and equity in multisectoral collaborations and encourage increased engagement with TSOs, to rigorously research and evaluate suicide prevention services.

Despite high rates of critical incidents (CIs) in working class occupations, there is a significant gap in our understanding of responses to these events. In this study, we aimed to inform a response training module by synthesising the key elements of pre-, during- and post-incident responses to CIs and suicide in the workplace. A rapid review identified studies on responses to CIs or suicide deaths in the workplace published between January 2015 and June 2020. A systematic search of six databases (Medline, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Sociology Collection, Academic Search and Business Search Complete) and grey literature was performed. Studies were excluded if the focus was on non-colleagues. Two reviewers independently conducted record screening, a review of the full text and assessed study quality. The existing evidence was synthesised and interventions were categorised using Haddon’s Matrix. Five studies were included, reporting on CIs across a range of workplace settings, including railways, factories, police and military, along with external critical response units. Overall, study quality was assessed as being poor. Most of the evidence focused on the pre-incident and post-incident stage. There is little evidence on responses to CIs in the workplace. Evidence-based education and training is necessary to establish organisational responses to assist with supporting workers exposed to workplace CIs.

Co-creation of new knowledge has the potential to speed up the discovery and application of new knowledge into practice. However, the progress of co-creation is hindered by a lack of definitional clarity and inconsistent use of terminology. The aim of this paper is to propose a new standardised definition of co-creation of new knowledge for health interventions based on the existing co-creation literature. The authors completed a systematic search of electronic databases and Google Scholar using 10 of the most frequently used co-creation-related keywords to identify relevant studies. Qualitative content analysis was performed, and two reviewers independently tested the categorisation of papers. Of the 6571 papers retrieved, 42 papers met the inclusion criteria. Examination of the current literature on co-creation demonstrated how the variability of co-creation-related terms can be reduced to four collaborative processes: co-ideation, co-design, co-implementation and co-evaluation. Based on these four processes, a new definition of co-creation of new knowledge for health interventions is proposed. The analysis revealed the need to address the conceptual ambiguity of the definition of “co-creation of new knowledge”. The proposed new definition may help to resolve the current definitional issues relating to co-creation, allowing researchers and policymakers to progress the development of co-creation of new knowledge in research and practice.