Chris and Taryn had posted regarding our buddy Carl and had mentioned their concern for the potential to miss warning signs and potentially mishandling a serious situation, such as in the case study. As I also was concerned about this and I thought I would post a link to our moodle sight as there is an article on recognizing signs of suicide. Not the same topic, but the more we know about how to identify issues like this in the classroom the more prepared we can be to help out students who need it. This knowledge might make it a little less overwhelming once we're in the classroom.
I couldn't upload the article directly to this post so I've added the link to the page on moodle. The article is called "Information about Suicide Prevention"
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I went to the moodle page you are talking about and read over the suicide prevention article. It is amazing how many of those ‘clues’ I have had without ever being what I term to be ‘suicidal’. I know it’s a bit of a taboo subject which is what the article calls it, but at times during my adolescence I know the thought of ‘I should just kill myself’ crossed my mind during trying times, but my rational brain would (in a heartbeat) tell my non-rational brain ‘Don’t be an idiot.’ I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that a significant percentage of teenagers have those same random thoughts that I did. Which brings me to my question of...which depressed teen is the one that is actually suicidal? If any at all? How do you determine an actual threat? It’s kind of scary to think about. I think the Carl case shows one really good thing the teacher did...it showed that the teacher had created a safe and warm environment in the classroom. If the teacher hadn’t done this, then Carl would not have approached this specific teacher with his problems. I think that is one of the most important lessons we should take from this case. Something to think about anyway.
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