The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 109 This idea coincides with the recommendation from the American Association of Suicidology that proposes suicide knowledge and assessment be at the forefront of graduate program curricula (Schmitz et al., 2012). First, in foundational courses, students could become more comfortable with the topic of suicide. These courses could help break down barriers and possibly calm nerves that tend to surround the topic of suicide. In assessment courses, students could role-play giving a partner various suicide screenings and assessments and gain experience interpreting the results. These roleplays could occur during class or be recorded for faculty feedback. In skills courses, students could practice suicide intervention by broaching the topic with their classmate-clients to help them feel more comfortable with directly asking clients if they are experiencing suicidal ideations. In addition, it may be helpful if a trauma and crisis counseling course was required within the core curriculum. This course could have content devoted to suicide screening, assessment, and intervention, including both didactic and experiential opportunities. By offering these opportunities throughout the curriculum, similar to ethical and cultural considerations, students may feel more comfortable and confident as they enter their clinicals (Binkley & Leibert, 2015; Guillot Miller et al., 2013). This intentional, consistent exposure to practicing these skills could help more students gain foundational knowledge and experience with this topic. In turn, as their self-efficacy and comfort levels increase, they may be more confident addressing this topic with clients. Ultimately, this may increase client welfare by ensuring effective assessment and treatment of client needs. Implications for Counselor Education Training Research The topic of suicide screening, assessment, and intervention in counselor education and supervision could benefit significantly from continued outcome-based research. For example, longitudinal studies could track students’ perceived levels of self-efficacy on suicide screening, assessment, and intervention as they go through a counseling program. This may help educators become more intentional about when and how the topic is infused within the curriculum. In addition, research could compare different types of teaching methods (e.g., role-play versus lecture) that expose students to the topic and assess which methods are more influential in building students’ skills and self-efficacy. Finally, researchers could interview current mental health therapists to identify knowledge and skill gaps to help educators teach students about crisis counseling more intentionally. Limitations There are a few limitations to the current study that are important to discuss. First is the variability in teaching and supervision styles across different instructors, which may impact the students’ overall feelings of self-efficacy. Although the same procedures were followed, educators inevitably have different styles of giving feedback. How the feedback is perceived by the student may impact their confidence in using the acquired skills. Another limitation involves the notion of social desirability bias. The participants in the current study were students in the program; therefore, they may have felt pressured to identify increases in their self-efficacy around suicide assessment and intervention. This pressure may have been experienced because some of their current professors also served as researchers in the study and the students may have wanted to gain favor with them. With regard to external validity, there are a few limitations. First, our research team did not account for prior experience in suicide screening, assessment, or intervention; thus, the results could have been impacted by external experiences versus the sole experience of the course activities. Additionally, there was a large portion of the data that could not be used because the pre- and post- surveys could not be
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