Suicide Assessment Training in Counselor Education

This dissertation examines the empirical literature regarding assessment and intervention of suicide, specifically regarding training counseling students to assess and intervene with potentially suicidal individuals. The author developed an online suicide assessment and intervention training module to train counseling students how to assess and intervene with suicidal clients. The author examined the effectiveness of the training module using an experimental randomized controlled pre-post design. Participants were assessed on their suicide intervention skills using the Suicide Intervention Response Inventory-2 (Neimeyer & Bonnelle, 1997), and suicide assessment abilities, abilities to determine level of suicide risk, and abilities to determine appropriate clinical actions using the Suicide Assessment Checklist (Rogers & Alexander, 1994). Results partially supported for the effectiveness of this method for improving participants' suicide intervention skills. Results indicated a modest improvement in posttest scores in suicide intervention skills, but not more so than the control. Results were inconclusive for the effectiveness of this method for improving participants' abilities for assessment, determining level of risk, and determining clinical action.Counselor EducationDoctoralUniversity of New Mexico. Division of Individual, Family and Community EducationGoodrich, KristopherLemberger-Truelove, MatthewJones, MartinKrebs, Marjor