The Role of Social Work in Suicide Prevention, Intervention, and Postvention: The Absence of a Voice and a Need for Action

Introduction: Through prevention, intervention, and postvention efforts, social workers frequently encounter those whose lives have been touched by suicide. Social work offers a unique perspective on issues such as suicide, with a concern for the holistic understanding of the person and a focus on social justice and change. However, the social work voice has been notably missing from the literature on suicide. In light of this, and given the continued public focus on suicide prevention, the authors aimed to extend the work of Joe and Niedermeier (2006) to identify recent contributions of social workers in this area of research, with an emphasis on the empirical literature relating to preventative and postvention interventions for suicide. Method: An exhaustive search for relevant studies published between January 2003 and December 2013 was undertaken of seven electronic bibliographic databases selected in the areas of social work, psychology, health, and sociology. Using the PRISMA guidelines (Liberati et al., 2009) tailored keyword search strings using advanced search functions were devised. The search strategies were designed to be both sensitive and specific, yielding 3,262 potentially relevant citations. A three stage screening process was utilized with one author reviewing all search results, and two additional authors reviewing all articles identified as meeting the inclusion criteria. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the methodology and populations of the studies retrieved, the authors did not attempt to undertake a meta-analysis; rather a narrative synthesis was conducted using content analysis to determine the frequency of key domains which were then counted and tabulated. Included articles were categorized according to Rosen's (Rosen, Bailey, Proctor, Bruno & Staudt, 1999) typology of social work knowledge, where social work research outputs have been grouped according to one of three categories namely descriptive, explanatory and control. Results: The systematic review resulted in the identification of 241 articles on suicide authored by social workers. A majority of the papers retrieved were found to be either descriptive 33% (n=79) or explanatory 57% (n=137) in nature. Only 10% (n=25) of the 241 studies were identified as a control study. This reaffirms the previous findings of Joe & Niedermeier (2006) where there remains a paucity of social work research on knowledge that guides and directs social work practice through the testing and evaluation of the efficacy of strategies for suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. Conclusion: Results of this review suggest that social work researchers should more actively pursue contributions to the evidence base on primary prevention of suicide and interventions for those bereaved by suicide loss. As argued by Rosen et al., (1999, p.8) social work research has been dominated by explanatory studies as opposed to control studies. When considering the prevalence of suicide, the impact on those left behind, and the importance that has been placed by governmental and other agencies on reducing the rates of suicide, social workers clearly need a stronger voice and greater involvement in the development and evaluation of programs and interventions to reduce suicide and to help those left behind after a suicide death.