Two tribes

There seems to be a dramatic gap between "front line" health staff and the administrators of the HSE, and an even more dramatic one between doctors' perception of the problems of the health service and politicians'. This not just the case in Ireland. There are lots of reasons why this might be so. One however relates to a more general issue about how scientists and experts communicate with politicians and "policy makers" (a wonderfully vague term that seems to mean anyone of influence) about scientific and medical issues. We have lots of training now in how to communicate with patients, but communicating with politicians/policy makers seems to be nearly as important a skill. One set of suggestions I found online, from the world of palliative care, can be read here (you have to scroll down a bit to get to the part about politicians)

An exercise for readers of the blog - if were given half an hour to present to the Minister for Health and a random selection of influential TDs (or MPs, or Senators, or whoever) about suicide, or psychiatric stigma, how would you go about it? What would you like to get through to them?

Reporting suicides

One of tomorrow's lecturers is Joe Little, RTE's Religious and Social Affairs Correspondent. You've probably seen him on the news! He'll be talking about psychiatry and the media. One of the most pressing issues in this regard is how suicides are reported. The way suicides are reported has been shown to affect suicide rates. You can look at some guidelines here. Reporting of suicide methods also can affect which methods are used. For instance, in Singapore some high profile deaths by suicide involved charcoal burning, and subsequently the proportion of suicides by this method increased (you can read about this here.