High School Teachers' Experiences with Suicidal Students: A Descriptive Study

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among U.S. adolescents, claiming almost 2,000 teenagers' lives a year. Additionally, research indicates that almost 1 in 5 high school students seriously considers suicide each year, and almost 1 in 10 makes a suicide attempt. School teachers potentially can contribute to suicide prevention by serving as the gatekeeper to social workers and other mental health service providers for at-risk students. However, researchers have rarely examined teachers' experiences with suicidal students and suicide prevention training. This study sought to fill that knowledge gap by identifying the proportion of teachers who had talked with a suicidal student, the proportion who had received suicide prevention training, and how students' disclosures and teachers' suicide prevention training might relate to each other. METHOD: Teachers at two Denver, Colorado-area high schools anonymously completed pen-and-paper surveys during a staff meeting in the fall of 2007. Although the schools' student bodies differed dramatically in demographic profiles, teachers from each school did not differ at a statistically significant level according to race/ethnicity, gender, or age, so the two samples were combined. The total sample comprised 120 people (50.0% female; 88.3% White; mean age = 41.5 years; SD=11.3). Survey items addressed the teachers' experiences with students who disclosed suicidal thoughts, as well as their prior training in suicide prevention. RESULTS: More than half of teachers (58.1%) reported that a student had ever confided suicidal thoughts to them, including 22.2% of teachers who had encountered a suicidal student within the previous year. At the same time, almost half (48.7%) of the sample had received no formal training in suicide prevention in their course work or continuing education. Even among those who did report prior suicide-related education ever in their life, the median number of hours was only two. Teachers with suicide prevention training were more likely to have directly asked a student if he or she was suicidal, compared to those without training (40.7% vs. 19.6%, chi square = 5.7, p <.05). Similarly, having received formal training in suicide prevention was strongly related to having had a student disclose suicidality (whether directly asked or not); of those reporting contact with a suicidal student, 78.0% had completed some type of suicide prevention training, compared to 36.5% who reported no contact with a suicidal student (chi square = 19.5, p < .001). The teachers' courses of action for dealing with a suicidal student generally involved immediate referral to a school social worker or counselor. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: This study revealed that although many teachers have encountered a student at risk for suicide, only half ever received suicide prevention training. Such training related positively to teachers' inquiring directly about suicidality, but a causal relationship cannot be established from these cross-sectional data. In light of the high prevalence of teachers in contact with suicidal students, combined with little suicide-related education, school social workers and administrators should consider offering suicide prevention training seminars to teachers and learning more about their experiences with suicidal students.