Student suicide
Twenty years later, a student suicide still affects college professor Pamela Johnston.At the time, she had few resources for addressing the behavior she was seeing in the classroom. "I thought," she writes in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, "I was letting him off easy by ignoring him."
All college instructors--from graduate TA's to tenured full professors--ought to equip themselves to recognize and ask about signs of suicide, the "red flags" that students (and others) wave in hope that someone will intervene.
We know that people thinking about suicide are more likely to tell a caring person than a professional (and believe it or not, students sometimes perceive faculty as "caring").
For those who want to be better prepared for moments when students tell you suicide seems like an option, I highly recommend the programs offered by LivingWorks,* an international organization dedicated to creating "suicide safer" communities through empirically based education.
For those seeking to better understand suicide and how it continues to shape the lives of teachers and others who know someone who commits suicide, the LivingWorks website has comprehensive links to suicide-prevention resources from all over the globe.
*In the interest of full disclosure, I am a trainer for the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training program administered by LivingWorks.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, March 06, 2006
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