Suicide prevention program (SPP) in South Asian Countries: A protocol for systematic review

Introduction: Every year, over 700,000 individuals lose their life by suicide and many individuals attempt suicide. Suicide occurs in all age groups and is the fourth major cause of death among 15-29-year-olds globally in 2019. A suicide prevention program (SPP) is a capacity-building program that helps gatekeepers to identify the risk of suicide. The objective of the review is to determine the effectiveness of SPP on the improvement of knowledge, attitude, and gatekeeper behaviour among gatekeepers in South Asian countries so that the number of suicide cases will be reduced among college students in South Asia countries. Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) will be followed in this review. This review will include all interventional studies (controlled and uncontrolled) that provided a suicide prevention program to the gatekeepers as an intervention. The full-text articles will be included from the following databases, Scopus, PubMed (MEDLINE), Cochrane, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and CINAHL, published in peer-reviewed, and indexed journals from the date of inception to 2022. A grey literature search and hand-search of reference lists of the included studies will also be done. A search strategy will be developed using keywords and MeSH terms for each database. Cochrane ROB-2 tool, JBI Critical Appraisal Checklist will be used to evaluate the quality of individual studies. Analysis of the data will be done using narrative synthesis. Conclusions: This review will provide information on knowledge, attitude, and gatekeeper behaviour toward suicide prevention in college students and will be helpful for the prevention of suicide. Therefore, the authors plan to publish the review outcome through a peer-reviewed journal. Registration : The review is registered in PROSPERO (CRD42023387020).