Collaboration is key: School psychologists' experience in suicide intervention

Abstract

School psychologists are key school-based personnel when responding to suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The present paper explored the experiences and attitudes of school psychologists, with a special focus on collaborating during suicide intervention activities. Using a descriptive phenomenological approach, a purposive sample procedure identified 10 school psychologists. Data were collected via inperson, semi-structured interviews. Most participants were female (n = 9) and all were practicing within the school setting and had delivered suicide intervention activities.Experiences described through interviews suggested collaboration while responding to suicide was a common activity that enhances the quality of services, external collaboration-though beneficial for students-can be a barrier to the provision of services, school psychologists cope through collaboration, and suicide intervention services would benefit from increased collaboration.Implications for practice include working to develop stable partnerships with external stakeholders and increasing collaboration during suicide assessment and response.

Interprofessional collaboration: Ethical considerations for school psychologists.

“…Although different models of collaborative care exist (see Lyon et al, 2016), there is general agreement that interprofessional and interagency collaboration can be useful for addressing students’ diverse needs and providing more effective care by reducing the burden on any one professional, increasing consultation with others to gain a better understanding of a child’s comprehensive needs, and improving service delivery and quality (McClain et al, 2022; Sulkowski et al, 2011). For example, Hopple and Ball (2023) assessed the importance of interagency collaboration in suicide interventions among school psychologists. Findings revealed general agreement that increased collaboration can improve the quality of services provided to a child given the many benefits of interagency collaboration such as an increased ability to cope with stressful situations.…”

“…In addition to barriers to implementing MTSS, school psychologists have reported barriers to participating in interprofessional and interagency collaboration including a lack of training and preparedness to engage in interagency collaboration (Gardner et al, 2022); a lack of time, availability, communication across agencies, and knowledge on how to expand beyond one’s individual role in providing care (McClain et al, 2022; Shahidullah et al, 2020); a mismatch between different professions’ diagnostic codes (Cooper et al, 2016; Shahidullah et al, 2020); a lack of funding to support interagency collaboration (Cooper et al, 2016); system-level issues for clients (e.g., health care access, difficulty accessing services from multiple providers that are not in the same insurance network; Hopple & Ball, 2023); and issues with privacy and confidentiality (Cooper et al, 2016; McClain et al, 2022). Furthermore, school psychologists have reported difficulty communicating with primary care providers due to health care providers’ lack of knowledge of the special education process (Shahidullah et al, 2020).…”