Attitudes towards suicidal behavior: the effect of an educational intervention on university professors.

OBJECTIVE

To analyze the effect of an educational intervention on the attitudes of university professors towards suicidal behavior.

METHODS

Experimental study, which carried out an educational intervention with 100 university professors, divided into two groups, control and intervention, developed in three moments, pre-assessment, intervention, and post-assessment, using the Eskin's Attitudes Towards Suicide Scale (E-ATSS). Comparisons before and after intervention in the same group were performed using the paired t-test for dependent samples and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, and for comparisons between groups the paired t-test for independent samples and the Mann-Whitney U test were used, the significance level adopted was p < 0.05.

RESULTS

There was a change in the attitude of professors in the two domains of the suicide scale such as mental illness (p<0.001) and punishment after death (p<0.001) whose attitudes were negative in the pre-assessment phase. For the control group, no changes were observed.

CONCLUSION

The educational intervention promoted positive changes in attitudes, with a significant change evaluated at the end of the intervention in the domains: suicide as mental illness and punishment after death.