Estimates of student risk for suicide among university faculty

Suicide is a significant problem among college-aged adults across the country, and, to address this issue, suicide prevention activities have become common on college campuses. To investigate factors related to suicide prevention knowledge and behaviors among university faculty, the current study explored the relationship between faculty members' engagement in suicide prevention behaviors and their estimates of student suicide risk. Overall, faculty members at the University of Alaska Anchorage (N=295; 64.5% female) tended to overestimate students' risk for suicide, estimating that in the past year 12.8% of students had considered suicide and 4.0% had attempted suicide, compared to 5.5% and 0.7% of students actually considering and attempting suicide. Risk estimates differed by faculty gender and history of suicide prevention training, with a statistically significant interaction between the two variables. Female faculty who had received training in suicide prevention estimated significantly greater risk (estimating 22.1% of students considered suicide in past year and 7.6% attempted) than female faculty who had not received training (12.7% and 4.2%). The inverse was true for male faculty, with those who had attended training estimating significantly less risk than those who had not (estimates of suicide consideration: 7.3% vs. 10.1%; estimates of suicide attempt: 1.5% vs. 2.5%). Although causal direction cannot be determined, the relationship between training experience and risk estimate indicates potentially disparate understanding of suicide and inconsistent effects of training. Implications for suicide prevention training models are discussed with a focus on encouraging suicide prevention training and increasing knowledge of students' risk among faculty.