Funding from Tim Bergling Foundation for digital training in suicide prevention among the young
A four-year grant from the Bergling Foundation will provide support to Karolinska Institutet’s digital training initiative to help medical students be better at identifying and responding to suicidal children and young adults. The aim of the project is to give prospective doctors the tools they need to deal with young people in the risk zone.
Suicide is a serious public health problem, and one that, according to national statistics, has increased over the past two decades among young people (aged between 10 and 24), who can turn up across the breadth of the healthcare system.
The project that the Tim Bergling Foundation is now supporting is run by the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention (NASP) at KI and involves the further development of a digital training programme for medical students across the country focused on identifying and treating suicidality in the young.
“With a new technological platform, we’ll have the potential to train all medical students in Sweden every year, which will hopefully have a significant impact on how we treat young patients in the risk-zone for suicide,” says project manager Anna Lundh, specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry and NASP affiliate at the Department of Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet.
The functionality of the new digital platform will be adaptable to both educational activities and research requirements.
“The grant from the Tim Bergling Foundation is a critical enabler in our efforts to develop and implement the training initiative nationally, and we’re extremely grateful to the foundation for its generosity,” says Dr Lundh.
The training programme includes examples of how a conversation can develop, and allows students to practise appropriate responses. One key feature is for the students to write down their own assessments and then compare their answers with feedback from teachers.
Opportunity to practise difficult conversations
The students will also be trained in concluding the conversation, including how to draw up a crisis plan with their patients and their parents.
A pilot study was conducted in 2023 with medical students at KI, whose post-course evaluation verified the popularity of its format and content. The effects of the training programme are now to be evaluated.
The training programme has been developed with doctoral student Dr Josefin Ivarson, researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, KI, and resident physician at BUP (Child and adolescent psychiatry) Stockholm.