Human Service Student’s Preparedness for Assessing Suicidality: Recommendations for Human Services Education

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.