What is it about?
Graduate students in psychology see clients with suicidal thoughts and behaviors prior to becoming trained clinicians and researchers. Yet, there is little research on how much these students know of best suicide risk and intervention practices. We collected data on 166 psychology doctoral trainees in the United States to see what they know about suicide.
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Why is it important?
Our study revealed that numerous graduate students are not using the best tools to determine suicide risk or the best strategies to treat that risk. As suicide remains a large problem throughout the United States, graduate programs in psychology must improve their training of psychology students to best be able to help individuals with suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
Perspectives
I hope that this article can help inform graduate programs in educating their students, and possibly find its way to APA policies recommending suicide-related education.
Morgan Buerke
Louisiana State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Knowledge of suicide risk assessment and intervention procedures among psychology doctoral students in the United States., Clinical Psychology Science and Practice, April 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/cps0000341.
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