Suicide Prevention Programs for Adolescents
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Suicide Prevention Programs for Adolescents
In the instance of a suicide incident in school, the social worker therein has a responsibility to help the other students come to terms with their colleague’s loss and effectively undergo the healing process. For such a social worker, the most immediate concern ought to be students with concomitant life events and mild acquaintances of the deceased. Student reaction to the shock of death is an immediate concern and the consequent interpretations of mortality. In response, the resident social worker could schedule various events and assemblies to talk about the event, exploring the subject of death and how it impacts everyone else’s life. It is also important to reiterate the availability of counseling resources and to indicate a willingness to open and honest engagement with the students on that occurrence (Miron et al., 2019).
Given the shock and uncertainty around a suicide, it could be prudent to reestablish a semblance of order around the school by restoring normalcy. Group therapies that include hobby-trading, excursions, and partner-projects on social causes such as fighting drugs and substance abuse remind students that there is a whole life. Teachers and staff, too, ought to participate in common activates that reflect the reality on the ground. Interactive counselor sessions with students and group refresher causes on dealing with student psychological issues could suffice. It serves to remind them of their holistic responsibility to the students they nurture. Communally, the most effective group activity, could be organizing a wake to commemorate the deceased. Through such an initiative, the problem’s notoriety becomes public, according to stakeholders, the necessary push to act on teenage suicides.
The real solution for suicide, however, relies on establishing proactive means of dealing with the problem. One such way is by establishing an effective suicide prevention program for adolescents like screening. With screening, school administrators and stakeholders provide all students with questionnaires to identify high-risk adolescents based on various red-flag-words on their feedback. The high-risk adolescents identified in the exercise are isolated, and proper treatment procedures are administered. The program leverages available resources by ensuring that those who get it need it.
Consequently, it can serve whoever needs it effectively rather than blanket expenditure that only wastes the scarce resources available for school programs (Gould et al., 2018). Also, it provides grounds for timely intervention and possibly saves lives. Unfortunately, it is not immune to pranking and with students, pranking is quite common. Another shortcoming resides in its inability to filter for lies, implying that students who need help can easily pass as those who don’t.
References
Gould, M. S., Lake, A. M., Kleinman, M., Galfalvy, H., Chowdhury, S., & Madnick, A. (2018). Exposure to suicide in high schools: Impact on serious suicidal ideation/behavior, depression, maladaptive coping strategies, and attitudes toward help-seeking. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(3), 455.
Miron, O., Yu, K. H., Wilf-Miron, R., & Kohane, I. S. (2019). Suicide rates among adolescents and young adults in the United States, 2000-2017. Jama, 321(23), 2362-2364.