TPC-Journal-V6-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 1 77 Practitioner readiness in suicide assessment. In approximately eight of ten suicides, youth give advance clues or warning signs of their intentions that can be detected by others (McEvoy & McEvoy, 2000; Poland & Lieberman, 2002). In a study spanning four years of youth in a rural school district (N = 5,949) screened for suicidal thoughts, 670 (11%) reported having suicidal thoughts within the past year or past few days (Schmidt, Iachini, George, Koller, & Weist, 2015). Practitioners working within school or community mental health settings have an opportunity to play a critical role in the identification, assessment and prevention of youth suicide (Singer & Slovak, 2011). Within either setting, practitioners will encounter clients having suicidal thoughts or behaviors (Rudd, 2006). The practitioner’s responsibility in the assessment of suicide is to estimate risk based on identifying warning signs and associated behaviors and to respond appropriately (Bryan & Rudd, 2006). In a national sampling of social workers, 93% of the respondents reported having worked with a suicidal patient (Feldman & Freedenthal, 2006), and 55% of clinical social workers reported having a patient attempt suicide (Sanders, Jacobson, & Ting, 2008). In a study of psychology doctoral interns (N = 238) completed by Dexter-Mazza and Freeman (2003), 99% reported providing services to suicidal patients and 5% reported experiencing a patient death by suicide. Across professional disciplines, 22% to 30% of social workers, counselors and psychologists reported having a patient die by suicide (Jacobson, Ting, Sanders, & Harrington, 2004). Irrespective of the level of suicide training, comfort level or experience (i.e., even those with limited training and preparedness), the circumstances for which practitioners meet with a suicidal client are not only stressful, but also have legal and ethical ramifications (Cramer, Johnson, McLaughlin, Rausch, & Conroy 2013; Poland & Lieberman, 2002). Research suggests significant gaps exist related to the practitioner’s training and readiness to perform suicide risk assessments, highlighting training deficits in the level of preparedness, level of confidence and methods used to determine suicide risk level (Smith, Silva, Covington, & Joiner, 2014). Although youth suicide remains a national concern and priority, gaps appear most prominent in translating research into practice in developing and providing appropriate levels of training and supervision for practitioners (Smith et al., 2014). Research to support this concern offers valuable recommendations (Osteen, Frey, & Ko 2014; Schmitz, Allen, Feldman, et al., 2012); however, despite these recommendations, training and preparation continue to lag (Rudd, Cukrowicz, & Bryan, 2008). Practitioner competency skills in suicide assessment continue to be neglected by colleges, universities, licensing bodies, clinical supervisors and training sites that can have the greatest impact in reducing youth and adult suicide (Schmitz et al., 2012). Practitioner preparedness. In the past several decades, researchers began identifying gaps in suicide risk knowledge, finding that practitioners were inadequately prepared to assess suicide risk. In master’s and doctoral clinical and counseling psychology training programs, 40–50% were found to offer formalized training in suicide assessment and management of suicide risk (Kleespies, Penk, & Forsyth, 1993). Suicide-specific training was only included in 2% of accredited professional counseling programs and 6% of accredited marriage and family therapist training programs (Wozny, 2005). Training also has been identified as limited among social work graduate programs, averaging 4 hours or fewer specific to suicide education (Ruth et al., 2009). In a study by Feldman and Freedenthal (2006) randomly surveying social workers through the National Association of Social Workers (N = 598), almost all of the social work participants (92.3%) reported working with a suicidal client; however, only 21.1% received any formal suicide-related training in their master’s program.