To detect teenagers' suicide behaviour. Elaboration of a test and its validation (i)

CONTEX: General practitioner is used to be consulted by teenagers who have already had suicide ideas or attempted suicide and who were not been taking care for. The most of the time the GP doesn't know their antecedents; but as they are at risk to do it again, it's important to detect them. OBJECTIVE: To elaborate and to validate a test to detect teenagers' suicide behaviour. METHOD: After participating to a survey (Lycoll) which included 3 872 teen-agers, 17 GPs and 3 psychiatrists (ADOC) created a screening test to be used by GPs. It was a questionnaire, named TSTS, with 4 questions completed by 5 items to explore the troubles' severity. Then, this test has been experienced among 38 GPs who didn't know it before. This study has been done as a clinical audit. Each physician has been visited by a research clinical assistant who had been taught for it, to estimate the screening of suicide ideas or attempted suicide before and after taking knowledge of the test. RESULTS: Results indicate a very good acceptability of this screening tool which has been used for 60% of teenagers' office visits. It allowed to guide a large number of visits towards preoccupations which were different from the initial one and to detect suicide antecedents among 13% teenagers "tested" among whom 2/3 had already seen a GP. CONCLUSION: This test is recommended to GPs in usual practice to detect teen-agers at suicide risk. Language: fr