The INSURE project was one of the first North-South research studies to receive funding from the Health Research Board North-South Collaborative Initiative, according to Dr Kevin Malone, its principal investigator.
INSURE stands for [the] Ireland North-South Urban Rural Epidemiological Study of suicidal behaviour in major psychiatric disorders. With funding to date of £500,000 to the Western, Midlands and North Western health boards, the health research boards North and South, UCD, Queen's University, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (Ireland), the three-year project is a unique collaborative study into the causes of suicidal acts.
There are eight research locations conducting clinical and biological research on suicidal behaviour. The research is designed to allow comparison between young and old, and rural and urban populations.
The first year's research, which is almost complete, looked at 400 patients newly referred to the psychiatric services. These people have a broad spectrum of psychiatric diagnoses and cover all age groups and locations.
Year two will compare patients who present to accident and emergency departments with a "suicidal crisis" with a control group of accident and emergency patients with non-psychiatric problems.
The third year will examine 80 cases of suicide; the relatives, GPs and friends of the victims will be interviewed in depth as part of a "psychological autopsy". The results will also be compared with a control group of non-suicidal deaths.
The study builds from studying a low-risk population, through medium-risk and finally the ultimate high-risk group, those who have committed suicide. INSURE will compare suicidal behaviour between urban-rural and young-old populations. The results will allow for the design of intervention strategies tailored to each community and each age group. By carrying out prospective follow-up studies, INSURE will examine both the triggers and the threshold risk factors and define these for an Irish population. In particular, we should get a better understanding of the stresses which drive people to suicide.
The expertise of the Dublin Molecular Medical Centre and the Conway Institute in UCD will be a key to genetic and other neuro-scientific studies which will be carried out on each group. The biology of suicide in an Irish context will therefore be defined in a way which will be especially significant for a genetically homogeneous population such as ours.
The project is headed by Dr Kevin Malone, Prof Carol Fitzpatrick and Prof Patricia Casey of UCD, Dr Tom Foster and Prof Roy McClelland of Queen's University Belfast, and Prof Hugh Brady, professor of medicine at UCD. Full-time researchers in the eight locations will be co-ordinated by Dr Maeve Moran, senior research fellow at Mater Hospital/UCD.
The project promises follow-on prevention, intervention and treatment strategies based on science, which promise to be unique to Ireland.