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Background: Social workers are expected to play important roles in suicide intervention. Caregiving behaviours of medical personnel to suicidal individuals have been reported to be influenced by their own attitudes toward suicide. In this context, only a limited number of studies have examined social workers' attitudes toward suicide., Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore associations between personal or occupational factors of social workers and their attitudes toward suicide., Methods: A self-administered questionnaire was mailed to 2,999 study participants registered with the Tokyo chapter of the Japanese Association of Certified Social Workers. We adopted the Attitudes Toward Suicide Scale (ATTS) to measure attitudes toward suicide. MANCOVA was used to test for the effects of demographic, personal and occupational factors on ATTS sub-scale scores., Results: Participants with a history of suicidal thoughts had stronger attitudes regarding the right to suicide than those with no history; these attitudes were not affected by a history of participating in suicide-prevention training., Conclusions: Our findings suggest that suicide education should incorporate programmes directed at altering permissive attitudes toward suicide.

Background: Studies on attitudes toward suicide are of great interest to researchers worldwide. Although various instruments have been developed to measure attitudes toward suicide, psychometric properties of these instruments have not been systematically reviewed and organized., Aim: We aimed to identify valid, reliable and feasible attitudinal scales by systematically reviewing published articles on scale development and validation studies. In particular, this study focused on scales used for a wide range of populations to measure multidimensional attitudes toward suicide and related issues., Methods: Electronic searches of two databases, PubMed and PsychInfo, were performed. Scales with unique names were identified and listed after reviewing selected publications, and then evaluated for psychometric properties, multidimensionality and appropriateness for a wide range of populations., Results: A total of 2,210 publications were identified by the first electronic search. In the final review process of the selected publications, three scales - the Suicide Opinion Questionnaire (SOQ), Suicide Attitude Questionnaire (SUIATT) and Attitudes Toward Suicide (ATTS) - were identified., Conclusion: Each of these scales has its own characteristics and should be used in accordance with research purposes.