P102 - The role of the health psychologist in the prevention of suicides of detained people. Guidelines of Piedmont and Local Health Authority of Alessandria, Italy

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Abstract

With the 2007 guidelines "Prevention of suicide in prisons", the WHO defined the causes of suicide as "complex", indicating multiple factors such as environmental, socio-cultural, psychiatric, genetic disorders and social stress among the elements that can lead to self-harm and/or suicide attempts among prisoners. It is known that the psychological impact of arrest and imprisonment, withdrawal crises, the awareness of a long conviction or the daily stress of life in prison without work activities and cultural interventions can exceed the person's resistance threshold even in the absence of pre-existing risk factors and, even more, in the case of mental fragility.
This work provides information on the complex Italian penitentiary organization in which the health psychologist works and produces examples of multi-professional interventions implemented both towards prisoners assessed at suicide risk, but also towards penitentiary police officers who are the first to intervene in cases of anti-conservative acts. The ability of prison staff to be sensitive to the unaware aspects that can lead the prisoners to suicidal behavior is fundamental for preventive purposes as the official data provided by the Ministry of Justice reports 68 suicides in italian prisons in 2023 and already 13 in the month of January 2024. In 2022 only 11 of the 85 who died by suicide in prison were suffering from mental certified pathologies, which is why the regional guidelines involve multi-professional staff.

Authors

• Franca Bo, ASL Alessandria

• Elisa Ravera, ASL Alessandria

• Roberto Stura, ASL Alessandria

• Paolo Casamento, ASL Alessandria

• Alessandra Lugli, ASL Alessandria