Descriptive Data
The mean number of steps in the pathway to the specialist suicide service was 2.90 contacts (SD = 1.33). The most frequent sequence of contacts for the first three pathway steps was young person > doctor/GP > psychologist (9% of sample had this sequence). When the young person contact was not included, the most frequent sequence of contacts for the first three pathway steps was parent > doctor/GP > emergency services/psychiatrist (8% had this sequence). The most frequent initial contact was the young person, followed by the parent. The most common professional contact was with a GP/Doctor followed by Psychologist. The mean number of weeks between the onset of presenting problem to seeking professional help (help-seeking delay) was 16.5 weeks (SD=1.5, range 1 to 208). Treatment delay, that is the time between seeking professional help to accessing the SP service, averaged 37.7 weeks (SD=11.0; range 1 to 512). The duration between onset of presenting problems to accessing SP, that is onset duration had a mean of 48.0 weeks (SD=16.0, range 1 to 512). Further descriptive statistics of the frequency of each contact along the pathway are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Frequencies and percentages of contacts within each steps of pathway to care.