Improving Schools' Readiness for Involvement in Suicide Prevention: An Evaluation of the Creating Suicide Safety in Schools (CSSS) Workshop.

Patricia Breux,Dana E Boccio

doi:10.3390/ijerph16122165

Abstract

Schools have an important role to play in combatting suicide, a significant public health problem that disproportionately affects adolescents and young adults. Schools can work to reduce youth suicidality by adopting policies that align with best practice recommendations pertaining to suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention. This study examined the impact of a one-day training, the Creating Suicide Safety in Schools (CSSS) workshop, on the readiness of school personnel to improve their schools’ suicide-related policies and procedures. Participants (N = 562) consisted predominantly of school-based mental health professionals working in communities of low or mixed socioeconomic status in New York State. Survey data were collected according to a one-group pre-test—post-test design with a 3-month follow-up. Workshop participants demonstrated improvements from pre-test to post-test in their attitudes about the importance of school-based suicide prevention, knowledge of best practices, perceptions of administrative support, and feelings of empowerment to work collaboratively to enhance their schools’ suicide safety. At follow-up, participants reported barriers to implementing changes, most commonly in the form of insufficient time and stigma surrounding the topic of suicide. The results of this study provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of the CSSS workshop as a promising method for improving schools’ suicide safety, yet additional research using randomized controlled trials needs to be conducted.

Highlights

Suicide constitutes a serious public health problem that disproportionally affects young people in the US and worldwide [1]
Educational settings can serve as a force for positive change by amplifying the power of protective factors to create a “social ecology of wellness” [42] (p. 246) that is conducive to mental health and resilience
The Creating Suicide Safety in Schools (CSSS) workshop was founded on the idea that schools can work to foster a sense of interpersonal connectedness and support that guards against the emergence of suicidality in young people

Summary

Introduction

Suicide constitutes a serious public health problem that disproportionally affects young people in the US and worldwide [1]. According to the most recent data reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while suicide was responsible for fewer than 2.3% of deaths within the entire US population in 2016, it accounted for 20.2% of the deaths of young people aged 15 to 24 years [3]. Data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), a large-scale survey of US high school students administered biennially, reveal that a considerable minority of youth experiences some degree of suicidality [4]. National, and international efforts to combat this significant public health threat, youth suicide has been on the rise [5,6]

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion