Editorial Introduction

Allied health professionals play a unique and vital role in the clinical care of suicidal people and make contributions to the furtherance of clinically focused suicide research. Allied health professionals is a term that refers to a large group of health professionals that make up to 50–60% of the workforce in hospitals and clinics in the USA and Canada (University of California San Francisco, 2012; Association of Canadian Community Colleges, 2012). Despite comprising this large percentage of the workforce, a realistic appraisal of the scholarly, research contributions emanating from this group, indicates a very limited output. Part IV seeks in some small way to help to remedy that and contains five interesting chapters.