How May Motivational Interviewing Prevent Suicide in Patients Having Both Substance Misuse and Mental Disorders?

Background and context: The symptoms of patients suffering from substance abuse and mental disorders seem to have a demanding influence not only on themselves but also on the clinical staff. One of the potential outcomes for patients with this diagnosis is suicide, which is the most challenging in terms of providing nursing (Mendes 2015). In addition, National Health Service (NHS) choices (2017a) believe that clinicians’ knowledge and skills have significant influence on the quality of care for patients. In this regard, if clinicians are trained inappropriately or inadequately for providing special care to patients with dual diagnosis, it could have a significant effect on patients, clinicians, organisations, and even society, involved in this care (NICE 2017a). To ensure quality of care, the staff should be provided with appropriate training about suicide prevention for dually diagnosed patients. Motivational interviewing has been recognised as a method to improve and develop the quality of care, which could have a beneficial influence on patients with substance abuse and mental disorders (Baker et al. 2012 and Slagle and Gray 2007).

Purpose: To explore the efficacy of motivational interviewing in preventing suicide rates among patients who suffer from substance misuse and mental health disorders.

Methods: The following academic databases were searched online: CINAH, MEDLINE, Cochrane library, psycINFO, and psycARTICLES. Moreover, rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied in the search strategies, using headings and identified key words relevant to the topic. Fourteen articles were selected for relevance, fitting into specific search settings; however, eight articles were deemed unsuitable and, therefore, rejected because of the exclusion criteria. The remaining six articles, relating to motivational interviewing to prevent suicide among patients with substance misuse and mental disorders, were screened to analyse the results and quality of each study mentioned in the literature review.

Results: The six studies, which have been evaluated to test the efficacy of motivational interviewing for patients who suffer from both substance dependency and mental illness, were randomised in controlled trials followed by quantitative research. All these selected studies supported that integrated treatments have a beneficial influence on dually diagnosed patients by improving their depression scales.

Conclusion: Motivational interviewing, which usually is integrated with other psychosocial treatments, can improve depressive mood for patients with substance misuse and mental illness disorders.