In Australia, 31% of psychologists have experienced client suicide and 90% have seen clients experiencing suicidal ideation. In addition, students who study psychology go on to diverse other roles supporting the community. However, tertiary education in suicide prevention and support is limited, fragmented, and lacks the voice of lived experience, resulting in psychology graduates who are ill-prepared to respond and support. In 2023, our audit of accredited psychology courses revealed no suicide specific units in Australian universities. An ill-equipped workforce can have devastating impacts for people experiencing suicide-related distress, with provision of sub-optimal support and high risk of burnout. With improved education, psychology graduates can play a vital role in universal, targeted, and specialised interventions across health, government, industry, and community sectors.
In 2023, educators at Monash University developed a dedicated suicide prevention and support unit, with an option for 6-week online delivery and 12-week on-campus delivery. This unit is a unique subject offering in psychology training at an Australian university and seeks to reflect best-practice in the mental health and suicide prevention sectors by adopting a collaborative approach to designing the curriculum, with lived experience of suicide central to the development of the unit.
This presentation will describe the co-design process in which Monash University educators worked with Roses in the Ocean to develop the unit. The co-design process included contributions from people with expertise in education, research, practice, service provision, and lived experience of suicidality or suicide impact. People with lived and/or living experience of suicide, and people with experience of suicide bereavement, informed learning outcomes, identified key areas of content and safety considerations, and contributed to and/or reviewed draft curriculum.
This presentation is co-delivered by Monash University and Roses in the Ocean. We describe the methods and experiences of the collaboration between educators and people with lived experience including facilitators and barriers to co-designing the unit and learnings from working together. Key recommendations for future collaborative work with relevant stakeholders within and outside the university setting are also considered.