Social Work Instructors’ Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices about Teaching Suicide Content

ABSTRACT

In 2012, the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention recommended more education in suicide prevention for mental health professionals. This study of social work instructors (N = 225) explored attitudes, beliefs, and feelings toward teaching suicide content in practice courses; the content covered; barriers to teaching about suicide; and desired supports. Overall, instructors were confident and perceived themselves as knowledgeable, teaching primarily assessment, crisis intervention, and safety planning. However, some instructors described teaching outdated material (e.g., “no suicide” contracts) and some best practices were sparsely covered. Recommendations are presented here, including increasing training opportunities and creating materials and guidelines to support instructors teaching this content.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work education
• suicide
• suicide prevention
• attitudes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.