There is a major lack of support and guidelines to help teachers handle the problem of youth suicide, a conference heard yesterday.
Mr Dan Neville TD, president of the Irish Association of Suicidology (IAS), said there was very little assistance for a teacher who feared a pupil was considering suicide.
"We talk about referrals, but whom do you refer to? And how long does it take? Teachers need guidance and empowerment, they need to know what to do but there's nothing there."
He was speaking in Galway at a conference on suicide prevention in schools, organised by the IAS and the National Suicide Review Group. Of the 439 people who committed suicide last year, 33 per cent were under 30 years - of these 37 people were aged between 15 and 19. Many teachers echoed Mr Neville's concerns and pointed to the lack of follow-up they had experienced when seeking help for a pupil. IAS secretary Dr John Connolly called for a coherent national suicide prevention strategy for schools. He rejected fears such programmes would increase suicide rates.
"Given the impact of the media and the fashion in which suicide has been portrayed in educational and entertainment programmes, there is very little about suicide that young children and adolescents have not heard about," he said. "This makes it all the more important to introduce school programmes that will dispel the misinformation, myths and stigma that still surround the topic."
Mr David Lester, director of a New Jersey centre for the study of suicide, said school programmes were the only guaranteed way of getting the message through to teenagers. He said teenagers usually avoided services such as the Samaritans and they seldom visited doctors so they would not benefit from GP support.
Prof John Kalafat of the American Association of Suicidology advised schools against using testimonies from people who had survived suicide. He said this gave the message to teenagers that you could engage in this behaviour and survive. "This is exactly the opposite of what you should do," he said.
He also advised against bringing in experts to talk to students about suicide. He said schools should develop their own expertise, so the skills would remain in the school. Prof Kalafat discouraged holding large assembly presentations, as teachers could not monitor the reactions of the students.
He accepted the difficulty in getting teenagers to confide in teachers but said schools had to show that they cared deeply about the safety and positive development of their students.
"Contact with a caring adult is a major protective factor," he said. Every adult in contact with students, from bus drivers to canteen workers, should be familiar with the warning signs of suicide and should know the correct procedures to follow, according to Prof Kalafat.
