Trainee teachers' opinions about suicide

In response to the rising rate of youth suicide, interested parties - both overseas and in Australia - have examined various methods of suicide prevention. One popular approach has been to base prevention within secondary-school communities by equipping staff, especially teachers, to identify and appropriately intervene with at-risk youth. The attitudes toward suicide of trainee teachers from a large metropolitan university were examined. It was found that they held complex opinions about suicide. While endorsing the metaphor representing suicide as a cry for help, they also perceived the communicative intent of suicide as being primarily manipulative in nature. These results are discussed with reference to training and support of teachers by counsellors in secondary-school settings.