Acceptability and Feasibility of a Brief Online Suicide Prevention Training for School Staff

Suicide is a major public health issue for children and adolescents in the United States. It is essential to identify at-risk youth and connect them to services. Children and adolescents spend a large amount of time in school buildings with school staff and these adults are uniquely situated to recognize signs of depression, mental health challenges, and suicidal thoughts and/or behaviors. This study explored school staff's experiences (N = 4,493) with a 1-hour virtual suicide prevention course for K-12 school personnel, SOS Signs of Suicide for School Staff, which builds on SOS Signs of Suicide, a suicide prevention program for students in grades 6-12. Following the training, most participants reported knowledge of signs of suicide, confidence to have a caring conversation with a student, and the ability to safely connect a student with the appropriate school staff person. In the open-ended responses, most school staff (92.1%) provided positive feedback, demonstrating high levels of acceptability. Factors central to learning included interactive training structure, videos modeling student interactions, and the inclusion of the voices of youth with lived experience with suicide. These findings support the use of this interactive virtual suicide prevention training model to educate school staff in suicide prevention.