An intervention for family members of people with suicidal behaviours

Abstract Background: Suicide is a serious health problem, affecting not only the persons who experience it, but also their family members. Although there are few empirically supported interventions to help family members. The programme for relatives of people with Borderline personality disorder and dysregulation that has received the most empirical support is Family Connections. This is a cross-disciplinary skills training programme and contains 12 two-hour sessions held once a week. The specific objectives of the present study were: a) to adapt Family Connections program for relatives of patients with suicidal behaviour and test the efficacy of the intervention for relativesin a pilot study; b) to analyze the feasibility and acceptance of the intervention in the relatives; c) to analyze whether the changes produced in the psychological variables in the relatives after the intervention are related to changes in the psychological variables of the patients. Method: The study sample contained 10 relatives and nine patients. The relatives were assessed before and after the intervention. The evaluation protocol consisted of the BAS, DASS-21, FES, scale of expectations and opinions about the treatment, and a critical incidents log, as well as a focus group. Regarding the data analysis, Student's t-test for related samples was conducted to examine whether there were differences between before and after the intervention, and Cohen's d was calculated as an effect size measure. Results: Improvements were observed in most of the constructs assessed in the relatives, such as burden, concern, guilt, and depression. The relatives’ level of acceptance and satisfaction with the programme was high. In addition, patients decreased their suicidal behaviour, self-harm, visits to the emergency room, or number of verbal or physical arguments. Conclusions: The results show the usefulness of the intervention in relatives of people with suicidal behaviour and also confirm its good acceptance by family members. Its efficacy is confirmed, also in patients. This is a population that, has few empirically validated interventions, and none that also analyse the effect of the intervention on patients. Therefore, it is possible to argue that this is a good programme to prevent suicidal behaviour in the family environment. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT05157607. Registered 15 December 2021. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05157607?recrs=ab&cntry=ES&draw=2&rank=8