José Antonio Luengo Latorre

Camilo José Cela University

Suicide Prevention in Educational Centres

Participants: Eduardo Fonseca-Pedrero¹; Adriana Díez-Gómez¹; Luis Fernando López Martínez²

¹University of La Rioja; ²UNED

Symposium Summary

The need to deal with the prevention of mood disorders in our children and adolescents in a systematic, planned and rigorous way and, of course, the prevention of suicide and the detection and intervention in risk situations is absolutely essential today in educational centres. Unfortunately, it seems that it is the tragic and dramatic events that act as a revulsion, almost as an impulsive reaction, vehement, lacking order and scarcely imbued with knowledge and scientific evidence on the subject in question.

It is becoming increasingly frequent to hear the call for support and advice from management teams to deal with situations such as suicidal communication which, on many occasions, are known, and recognised, through the interpersonal relationships that students maintain with their peers in social networks. Or, in other situations, following the knowledge of autolytic attempts of a different nature.

Preventing, detecting and intervening in an adequate, complete and precise way becomes a need in which educational psychology can and must play an unquestionable role.

One death every two and a half hours, ten a day: the statistic on suicide in Spain. According to the available data, the comparisons, which are always odious, show us a very disturbing reality: every two and a half hours a person takes his or her own life in our country. Even recognizing the underreporting of suicides in, ten people die every day, doubling the number of deaths due to traffic accidents and surpassing up to 11 times, homicides and up to eighty those deaths due to gender violence.

The Symposium will focus on the proposed problems, contributing to the reflection on recent research projects on the processes of detection, intervention and prevention in which they are being implemented in the reference context.

Short CV

Graduate in Psychology from the Complutense University of Madrid, teaching official, belonging to the Secondary Education Teaching Staff. He is a specialist in Educational and Health Psychology and an expert in intervention in problematic schools.

He is currently a member of the Team for the Prevention of School Bullying in the Community of Madrid, dependent on the General Sub-Directorate of Educational Inspection of the Regional Ministry of Education of the Community of Madrid. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Chair Children's Rights at Comillas Pontifical University, secretary of the Governing Board of the Madrid College of Psychologists and Associate Director of the Journal Psicología Educativa of the Madrid College of Psychologists.

He has been a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the UCM and is currently a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the Camilo José Cela University in Madrid.

For ten years (2002-2012), he carried out his professional activity in the Child Defender in the Community of Madrid, General Secretary and, for the last two years, Director of the Technical Cabinet of the Institution.

Previously, he held positions of responsibility in the educational administration of the Community of Madrid, among others, as Director of the Early Childhood Education Service and Director of the Management Service of public Early Childhood, Primary and Special Education schools, and of the Teams Educational and Psycho-pedagogical Counselling.

Author of numerous publications related to bullying and cyberbullying, from publications in journals such as: Cyber behavior y cyber convivencia in adolescence (2018); Bullying, the characteristics of a real phenomenon or Basic lines of intervention (2018), books such as: Get active. Tutorial Action Project for Primary Education (2018), and book chapters such as: A theme for everyone (2019) in the phenomenon of violence.

In addition, he is the director and author of numerous convivencia plans, such as: Preparation and revision of the convivencia Plan of the educational centres (Support Document for the supervision of the convivencia Plan). Community of Madrid (2018); Plan for convivencia and prevention of bullying in secondary schools and Plan for convivencia and prevention of bullying in primary schools. Community of Madrid (2018); or Bullying and convivencia in educational centres. Guide for teachers and families. School Council of the Community of Madrid (2019).