TY - JOUR TI - Prevention of suicide: The IAM awarence training programme AU - Joseph,Catherine AU - Roopa,CG AU - Kumar,Uday AU - Bhatti,RS AU - Panhasarathy,R AU - Chandramohan,V AU - Gupta,JK AU - Krishrnamuithy,A AB - During the period 1991-1996, the incidence of suicide were on the increase in the Training Establishments of the Air Force. As a large number of these suicide victims were ab-initio airmen trainees, preventive measures to arrest this trend become a matter of serious concern in the Airmen Training Institutes. One of the immediate remedial measure taken was to assign groups of trainees to one mentor. The ‘mentoring’ system was already in existence in these Institutes and therefore to facilitate awareness in this group, the mentor population was chosen as the target for indoctrination. During the years 1997-2003, thirty workshops were conducted to educate over 600 mentors and instructional staff on various aspects of suicide and to provide guidelins for prevention and management. The overall objective of the workshops, which are still being conducted regularly is to provide awareness training to help mentors identify and prevent sucide in the workplace and environment. The methodology utilized for training in the workshops are lectures, visual aids, group discussions, case studies, post workshop assessment and feedback, compilation and communication of feedback to higher administrative authorities and evaluation of outcome effects. There have been no successful suicides in the trainee population since 1999. The paper outlines the possible reason for the decreased incidence of successful suicides. However, suicide attempts may still occur in the airmen training establishments and a reduction in these is also needed. This paper also identifies the types of changes required for future modification of the present prevention stategy, to help perfect it and achieve training goals through the use of ongoing intervention and surveillance monitoring activities. VL - 48 T2 - Indian Journal of Aerospace Medicine JO - Indian Journal of Aerospace Medicine J2 - Indian Journal of Aerospace Medicine SN - 0970-6666 SN - 2582-5348 ER -