The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 3 337 responded may be uniquely interested in this area, so the results may not reflect all school counselors. This study also did not limit the types of school counselors who could participate. It is possible that school counselors who work with younger children, such as elementary and primary school counselors, have less familiarity with suicide assessment and intervention than those school counselors who work with older children. The inclusion of these counselors could have affected the results of this study. Finally, this study did not ask participants if they graduated from a CACREP-accredited program. Because suicide prevention and assessment training are required components of CACREP-accredited programs, it is possible that school counselors who graduated from these programs may have different levels of training and self-efficacy than those trained in unaccredited programs. For future studies, researchers should consider limiting their samples to specific levels of schooling such as elementary, middle, or high school. This change would help illustrate the nuanced differences among school counselors in different academic environments as well as increase focus on the school counselors who most often work with suicidal students. Future studies should also consider surveying a sample that includes all school counselors, not just ASCA members. Researchers should also differentiate between school counselors who graduated from CACREP-accredited programs and those who did not. Collecting this data would allow researchers to detect if there are any differences in suicide assessment training and self-efficacy between these two groups. Finally, future researchers should consider designing a study that seeks to identify the factors that most impact suicide assessment self-efficacy. Although this study showed that a suicide attempt experience could impact suicide assessment self-efficacy, other factors, such as self-confidence, could have a larger influence. Suicide continues to be understudied in school counseling. Even though this study demonstrates the high likelihood that a school counselor will experience a student suicide, school counselors continue to report a lack of preparation in suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and suicide postvention. Although school counselors who experienced a student suicide attempt appeared to gain self-efficacy from their experiences, additional training in counseling suicidal students might help school counselors feel prepared before they face such serious situations. If additional training can help school counselors save students from suicide, then efforts must be made to adequately prepare them. Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure The authors reported no conflict of interest or funding contributions for the development of this manuscript. References Al-Darmaki, F. R. (2004). Counselor training, anxiety, and counseling self-efficacy: Implications for training psychology students from the United Arab Emirates University. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 32(5), 429–439. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2004.32.5.429 Allen, M., Burt, K., Bryan, E., Carter, D., Orsi, R., & Durkan, L. (2002). School counselors’ preparation for and participation in crisis intervention. Professional School Counseling, 6(2), 96–102. American School Counselor Association. (2020a). The school counselor and suicide risk assessment. https://school counselor.org/Standards-Positions/Position-Statements/ASCA-Position-Statements/The-School-Coun selor-and-Suicide-Risk-Assessment
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