Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

DOI

10.52678/001c.90175

Publication Title

Journal of Human Services

Volume

42

Issue

2

Pages

15-26

Abstract

Suicide continues to be a public health concern, with suicide rates increasing. Human service professionals are among the helping professions tasked with assessing and addressing suicidality. Despite the well-documented benefits of suicide assessment and training for those within the helping professions, there remains a dearth of literature specific to suicide prevention in the preparation of human services students. To address this gap, the current study used the SIRI-2 to assess the preparedness of human services students (n = 98) to assess and address client suicidality. Findings indicated that participants’ responses were less competent than area experts. Furthermore, student participants’ responses were more invalidating, unhelpful, and conveyed less empathy. These results suggest that a need for increased or focused training that addresses suicidality within undergraduate human services programs. Limitations of the current study, future directions, and implications are discussed.

Rights

© 2023 The Authors.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY-4.0).

Original Publication Citation

Sparkman-Key, N., Moe, J., Augustine, B., & Belcher, T. A. (2023). Human service student’s preparedness for assessing suicidality: Recommendations for human services education. Journal of Human Services, 42(2), 15-26. https://doi.org/10.52678/001c.90175

Download

Share

COinS