Abstract
Introduction: Around one-third of adolescents in Germany report a lifetime history of suicide ideation. School staff (e.g., teachers or school social workers) can serve as gatekeepers to identify adolescents at risk and transfer them to appropriate mental health professionals. The aim of this study was to evaluate a gatekeeper training for school staff.Methods: A total of N = 603 school social workers, school psychologists, and teachers participated in one of 33 1.5-day workshops. Knowledge, attitudes, confidence in skills, and perceived knowledge were assessed at pre and post workshops and at 6-month follow-up (FU). Behavioral changes were assessed via self-report at FU.Results: Knowledge, perceived knowledge, and confidence in own skills concerning suicidality increased significantly from pre- to post-assessment and was still significantly increased at 6-month FU. Attitudes toward suicidal adolescents were neutral to positive before the workshop and remained un-changed at FU. Overall, participants were very satisfied with the workshop. Although participants stated to be motivated to make behavioral changes at 6-month FU, they reported obstacles such as lack of resources and support from school administration.Discussion: This 1.5-day gatekeeper workshop was effective in enhancing knowledge and confidence in school staff regarding suicidality. Future workshops would benefit from ongoing supervision and inclusion of school administration in order to facilitate long-term changes on a behavioral level.
Highlights
Around one-third of adolescents in Germany report a lifetime history of suicide ideation
These results are underlined by a recent study showing positive effects in behavior in prevention staff, and knowledge and skills for Australian school staff when dealing with suicidal adolescents after having participated in the Skills-based Training on Risk Management (STORM), including role-plays and active skills learning (Robinson et al, 2016)
Susanne Condron et al (2015) showed that participants of longer gatekeeper trainings showed more behavioral changes in prevention staff as those participating in shorter trainings
Summary
Around one-third of adolescents in Germany report a lifetime history of suicide ideation. Around one-third of students in 17 European countries reported having had suicidal ideation at least once (Kokkevi et al, 2012), with slightly higher rates in Germany of 36.4–39.4% in school-based populations The authors concluded that more extensive training, including role-plays and modeling, are crucial to changing behaviors in prevention staff (Coleman and Del Quest, 2015). These results are underlined by a recent study showing positive effects in behavior in prevention staff, and knowledge and skills for Australian school staff when dealing with suicidal adolescents after having participated in the Skills-based Training on Risk Management (STORM), including role-plays and active skills learning (Robinson et al, 2016). To our knowledge, except for the SEYLE study (Wasserman et al, 2015), no study has so far assessed the effect of gatekeeper trainings for school staff on actual suicidal behaviors in adolescents
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