Youth Suicide: Prevention and Intervention Guides for Medical Social Workers

The incidence of youth suicide requires that schools and communities collaborate and increase suicide prevention efforts and that they be prepared to respond if a suicide occurs in order to reduce suicide contagion. This presentation will help school and community mental health personnel increase their understanding of the most common factors in youth suicide. Participants will learn effective strategies to prevent youth suicide and lessons from the aftermath of numerous suicides.

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this seminar, participants will be able to:

• • Identify protective factors and primary prevention programs to prevent youth suicide.
  • Identify and dispel key myths about suicide.
  • Describe the relationship between school shootings and suicide and identify the most common motivation for murder/suicide.
  • Describe a comprehensive best practices model for suicide prevention, intervention and postvention in the schools that includes assessment and depression screening
  • Identify the lessons from a number of legal cases where schools were sued following a youth suicide.

CONTENT

• Prevalence Murder/Suicide
• Best Practices for Schools
• Warning Signs
• Suicide Risk Assessment
• Safety Plans
• Lawsuits
• Imitative Behavior
• Postvention
• Cluster Interventions

FOR WHOM

Psychologist, Social Workers, Counselors, Teachers, Therapists, Case Managers, Marriage and Family Therapists and Nurses

TRAINING METHODOLOGY

The training methodology combines lectures, discussions, group exercises and illustrations. Participants will gain both theoretical and practical knowledge of the topics. The emphasis is on the practical application of the topics and as a result participant will go back to the workplace with both the ability and the confidence to apply the techniques learned to their duties.