Adolescent suicide : the effects of symptom awareness training for secondary teachers in the detection of suicidal
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Abstract
The purpose of this proposal is to assess teachers' awareness of precipitating factors of adolescent suicide after having received symptom awareness training as compared to teachers who have not received such training. Precipitating factors will include: (1) social isolation, (2) break-up of a romance, (3) depression, and (4) verbal suicide threats. A group of twenty teachers will participate in a workshop which will present suicidal symptoms and opportunities to practice identifying these symptoms. Another group of twenty teachers, who have not received such training, will be utilized as the control group. Each group will be shown a series of videotapes depicting combinations of the precipitating factors mentioned above. Immediately after viewing each videotape, an inert sealer, utilizing statements of the presence of each precipitating factor will be administered to measure the detection of suicidal symptoms. In this study, it is predicted that teacher awareness of observable manifestations of suicidal adolescents is not keen enough to facilitate early intervention. It is further hypothesized that providing awareness training of suicidal symptoms to teachers will significantly increase identification of suicidal symptoms. The Mann-Whitney U'-test will be utilized to determine any significant difference between test groups.