Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jan 28;151(2):54.
doi: 10.1007/s00432-025-06106-z.

Practitioners' perspective: a mixed-methods study on dealing with suicidality from the perspective of oncological healthcare professionals

Tamara Schwinn  1 , Judith Hirschmiller  2 , Jörg Wiltink  2   3 , Rüdiger Zwerenz  2 , Elmar Brähler  2   4 , Manfred E Beutel  2 , Mareike Ernst  2   5
Affiliations

Practitioners' perspective: a mixed-methods study on dealing with suicidality from the perspective of oncological healthcare professionals

Tamara Schwinn et al. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. .

Abstract

Purpose: Healthcare professionals (HCPs) play a critical role in suicide prevention and clinical guidelines recommend inquiring about suicidality as part of medical history and diagnosis. Emerging evidence indicates a lack of implementation of such policies in clinical practice. However, to date, no comprehensive mixed-methods study has examined this issue in the field of oncology.

Methods: A preregistered mixed-methods study was conducted with oncological HCPs (N = 20) from various professions, using semi-structured interviews and validated questionnaires. Employing an explorative theory-generating approach, qualitative content analysis was applied to the interviews. The different data sources are integrated and contrasted. Comparisons according to sociodemographic variables (profession, age, and gender) and frequency distributions were used to examine the questionnaire data.

Results: Most HCPs reported direct or indirect experiences with suicidality in cancer patients. Nineteen HCPs did not routinely explore suicidality, of whom five reported not inquiring about it at all. Those who explored suicidality were more confident, less emotionally overwhelmed and reported higher subjective knowledge. HCPs also differed regarding their endorsement of suicide myths.

Conclusion: The study highlights difficulties with active suicide exploration and differences among HCPs. Integrating these findings into education and training could improve HCPs' skills and reduce disparities, supporting successful suicide prevention.

Keywords: Cancer patients; Healthcare professionals; Mixed-methods; Oncology; Psycho-oncology; Suicide prevention.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethical approval: The study contents and procedures were approved by the ethics committee of the Rhineland-Palatinate Chamber of Physicians (No. 2023–16975). Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. This work is part of the dissertation of the first author.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Piled bar charts of subjective knowledge, confidence, being emotionally overwhelmed and self-efficacy. This figure shows the frequency of each answer of the 20 HCPs as well as mean and standard deviations of responses to each question. The different professional groups rated their subjective knowledge as lower for the more specific kinds of knowledge. Most HCPs rated themselves as “a bit overwhelmed” in encountering suicidal desire. The HCPs rated their self-efficacy as high
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Boxplots of subjective knowledge by professional groups. The boxplots show differences in three levels of subjective knowledge regarding the professional groups. The more specific the questioned topic, the lower the mean value of subjective knowledge
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Boxplots of the estimation of people who die by suicide (the German version of the Suicide of Suicide Scale (SOSS-SF-D)). This boxplot shows the results of the German version of the Suicide of Suicide Scale (SOSS-SF-D). It shows higher agreement with the Depression/Isolation scale (M(SD) = 3.43(1.17)) and the Glorification/Normalisation (M(SD) = 3.45(1.13)) scale. There was less agreement with the items of the Stigma Scale (M(SD) = 1.34(0.68)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Amiri S, Behnezhad S (2019) Cancer diagnosis and suicide mortality: a systematic review and Meta-analysis. Arch Suicide Res 1–19. 10.1080/13811118.2019.1596182 - PubMed
    1. Appleby L, Kapur N, Shaw J, Hunt IM, Gianatsi M, Turnbull P, Rodway C, Tham SG, Burns J, Richards N (2018) National confidential inquiry into suicide and homicide–annual report: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. University of Manchester
    1. Beierlein C, Kemper C, Kovaleva A, Rammstedt B (2013) Kurzskala Zur Erfassung Allgemeiner Selbstwirksamkeitserwartungen (ASKU). Methoden Daten Analysen (mda) 7(2):251–278
    1. Bordin ES (1979) The generalizability of the psychoanalytic concept of the working alliance. Psychotherapy: Theory Res Pract 16(3):252–260
    1. Calear AL, Batterham PJ (2019) Suicidal ideation disclosure: patterns, correlates and outcome. Psychiatry Res 278:1–6. 10.1016/j.psychres.2019.05.024 - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources