Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Psychology (Ph.D.)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Mark D. Terjesen

Second Advisor

Imad Zaheer

Third Advisor

Tamara Del Vecchio

Abstract

Suicide is preventable, however suicide rates among children and adolescents are continuing to rise (Curtin & Heron, 2019). As such it is imperative that school psychologists who have an opportunity to impact the incidence of suicidal behaviors amongst students are properly trained in suicide prevention, postvention, laws, and ethics (Miller, 2014). However, there is little known about the efficacy of certain training approaches in suicide for school psychologists that may overcome barriers to implementation such as cost and time consumption (Dunn et al., 2013; Robinson et al., 2013). The present study sought to create a measure encompassing school psychologists’ objective knowledge of suicide prevention/postvention best practices, laws, and ethics and their accuracy in implementing best practices, and sought to utilize this measure to evaluate the efficacy of a one-session, virtual, expert-led workshop. The knowledge segment comprised true/false questions regarding suicide prevention, postvention, laws and ethics. The accuracy portion encompassed hypothetical prevention and postvention situations with relevant evidence-based or non-evidence-based practices that were rated by likelihood of implementation on a 5-point scale. Upon review from experts in child/adolescent suicide and piloting of this measure with school psychologists, 50 practicing school psychologists completed the knowledge measure and vignettes before, one week after, and four weeks after attending a workshop. Their ages ranged from 26-65 with majority of participants being White women who work primarily in a public school setting. Knowledge measure and vignette scores significantly increased from pre-test to post-test time point and were maintained from post-test to follow up. Overall, this study highlights the efficacy of one session, virtual, expert-led workshops in increasing knowledge and application of knowledge. Past knowledge was found to be predictive of knowledge retention upon attending the workshop. Taken together these findings suggest that this format of training can be utilized for school psychologists in the field to remain current on best practices and follow up on prior knowledge to facilitate knowledge retention. As this training was only one hour and delivered in a virtual format, training in suicide can be more approachable and accessible to school psychologists. Other implications for practice and future research are discussed.

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