Tips for suicide prevention in classrooms

School is a key setting for suicide prevention. It's an environment where children and adolescents spend most of their day, with their peers, who serve as their role models. It's a space where they experience joys, frustrations, and learning, and where they develop social skills. This environment can shape, for better or for worse, their emotional development as adults. The period between 10 and 19 years old is a particularly critical stage of life for acquiring these skills, while also being a period of increased risk for the development of mental health disorders. These experiences, which are common during this time, don't occur in isolation; they are complemented by the family and community life that individuals experience.

The World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on preventive and promotional mental health interventions for adolescents, "Helping adolescents thrive," highlight, for example, the need to foster socio-emotional skills in adolescents . This is a role that the education sector can play by integrating emotional education into all the educational and recreational activities it organizes. Among the actions that should be promoted within the educational environment, the WHO emphasizes strengthening students' self-esteem, providing life skills, enhancing the development and consolidation of young people's sense of identity, promoting the expression of emotions, preventing bullying or violence in schools, and promoting stability and continuity of schooling, among others.

Glòria Iniesta Guirao

Primary school teacher. Coordinator

Asociación para la Prevención del Suicidio y Atención al Superviviente (APSAS)

Joan Roa Natividad

Psychologist. Associate professor and researcher in Social Psychology

Universitat de Girona

"Many myths about suicide remain deeply rooted in the education sector and must be dispelled."

Read more

But in addition to promoting socio-emotional skills, the WHO recommends training educational professionals to ensure a safe school environment (to prevent bullying, for example), providing support services, clear policies and protocols for staff when suicide risk is identified, as well as supporting families in this preventive knowledge.

There is an essential step to take in the educational environment, and that is to break with the most persistent myths in the educational field: that talking about suicide increases the risk of contagion, that it is not preventable, or that those who say they want to commit suicide do not do it.

Education professionals may have many questions about what they can do or how to support students in suicide prevention. To address these main concerns, the WHO published the document " Suicide Prevention: A Tool for Teachers and Other School Staff" in 2001, offering information on the issue in general, protective factors, risk factors, how to detect warning signs, and basic actions to be taken in educational institutions.

How to identify students at potential risk of suicide?

According to this WHO tool, there are seven key aspects in identifying students "at risk of mental and social distress who may harbor suicidal thoughts that ultimately lead to suicidal behaviors":

• Lack of interest in daily activities, and this represents a change in their previous behavior.
• A general decline in ratings.
• A decrease in effort.
• Inappropriate behavior in class
• Unexplained, repeated absences or absences without permission
• Excessive consumption of tobacco, alcohol, or other addictive substances.
• To be involved in incidents that incite student violence

Suicidal ideation is multifactorial, and numerous individual circumstances can influence it: cultural, sociodemographic, familial, personality, and mental health factors, as well as stressful negative life events. A trusting relationship between teacher and student, in a safe and respectful environment where the student feels free to express themselves without judgment, can be key in detecting personal risk situations.

In general terms, the World Health Organization summarizes its main recommendations for the educational environment in these key points:

1. Identify students with personality disorders and offer them psychological support.
2. Establish close relationships with young people by talking to them, trying to understand their personal situation, and offer some help.
3. It offers support for sadness or dejection without judgment.
4. Observe and train yourself to recognize early signs of suicidal communication, whether through verbal, written, artistic, or behavioral cues. Do not underestimate any sign.
5. It offers additional support to students with difficulties.
6. Pay attention to unjustified absences or absences.
7. Be mindful of your language and how you treat young people with mental illness or their personal situation; do not stigmatize them.
8. Drug and/or alcohol use are warning signs of emotional pain and risk factors.
9. It provides students with information and professional referrals for the treatment of mental disorders and/or drug addiction, including alcohol.
10. Restrict or eliminate access for vulnerable students to spaces and items that could cause them harm.
11. It is important to provide teachers and other members of the educational team with immediate access to resources to alleviate their stress at work.