Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Due to the crisis of suicide activity and self-harming behaviors, teachers must realize the crucial role they can play in the life and death decisions of students. The first critical step is for teachers to acknowledge and assess their own level of competence and comfort about this challenging topic. In research published over a decade ago, researchers stated that teachers are considered to be the front line in handling issues of student suicide, bound with a caveat that although teachers are on this front line, they are ill-prepared to handle suicide. My findings supported their claims, often in spite of required suicide training. Teachers’ perceptions of their competence, comfortableness, and front-line position in handling student suicide issues were examined in this longitudinal phenomenological research study. Participants included 236 elementary (124) and middle school (112) teachers in fourteen school districts in two Midwestern states and a U.S. territory over a twelve-year span. Based on a Likert scale of self-reporting questionnaires and follow-up interviews with 104 of the participants, findings indicated that while 99% of the participants felt that they were the front line in handling student suicide issues, over half felt uncomfortable in doing so. Regarding competence, 75% of the participants felt they were not at all competent. Teachers’ responses in 2012 or later showed higher feelings of both comfort and competency, which indicated they may have benefited from the emergence of state-mandated suicide training. During later years, findings indicated that social media played a key role in teachers’ competence.