Exploring and facilitating the assumption of the role of gatekeepers among Slovenian teachers in the context of COVID-19 epidemic consequences

Project presentation

Title: Exploring and facilitating the assumption of the role of gatekeepers among Slovenian teachers in the context of COVID-19 epidemic consequences

Project acronym: Z5-4592

Leading institution: UP FAMNIT

Principal investigator: doc. dr. Tina Podlogar

Partner institutions: /

Funding organization: Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARRS)

Research field (ARRS): 5.09.00 - Social sciences/ Psychology

Project type: Basic Postdoc Research Project

Duration: 1. 10. 2022–30. 9. 2024

Childhood and adolescence are developmental periods in which special attention should be paid to the development of good mental health. Mental health problems typically start at a young age, and suicide is among the leading causes of death in adolescence. Despite the encouraging trend of declining suicide rates in Slovenia in recent decades, we still record an average of approximately 10 suicides of 10 to 19-year old adolescents each year. Children and adolescents are therefore a very vulnerable group. Since they spend much of their time in schools, it makes sense to implement interventions for mental health promotion and suicide prevention in the school environment. Primary and secondary school teachers have the role of “gatekeepers”, as they are in regular and close contact with adolescents and are therefore in a unique position to recognize signs of distress and react appropriately. They may feel more or less willing and competent to take on this role; however, this may be due to the influence of a number of factors, both general and specific, related to the consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The proposed project focuses on the willingness and competence of primary and secondary school teachers to take on the role of gatekeepers. The aim of the project is to explore the contribution of various factors that may play an important role in this and to develop a tailored intervention and evaluate it. Specifically, the project intends to systematically review existing interventions for teachers as gatekeepers; examine the role of general and specific factors related to the willingness and competence of teachers to take on the role of gatekeepers; develop and pilot implement an intervention to strengthen the willingness and competence of teachers to take on this role, evaluate the impact of the intervention through objective and subjective evaluation, and prepare guidelines for further implementation of the intervention.

We intend to include about 200 primary or secondary school teachers who are in contact with adolescents of the last triad of the 9-year elementary school and with high school adolescents. We will conduct a randomized controlled study, which means that participants will be randomly assigned to the “intervention group” or the “waiting-list control group”. In this way, we will exclude the possibility that potential differences between the groups would be based on differences in the motivation of the participants. Participants will complete two sets of questionnaires; the first one as part of the baseline study and the second one as part of the evaluation. In doing so, we will focus on various constructs, e.g. competence and willingness to take on the role of system gatekeeper as primary outcomes; and subjective well-being, satisfaction with the school climate, attitudes towards mental health problems and help-seeking, the stigma of suicidal behavior, pandemic fatigue, resilience, etc. as predictors. An objective evaluation of the pilot intervention (training for the teachers) will be carried out by analysing the differences in the results obtained before and after the intervention, comparing the results of the "intervention group" with the results of the "waiting-list control group". Subjective evaluation will be performed by analysing the participants’ answers to additional questions about their impressions of the usefulness of the intervention.

The proposed project has great scientific and professional importance, as it combines methodologically sound empirical research with a practical pilot implementation of an intervention, which will be supported by the existing knowledge. The results of the project will thus contribute to the development of science in Slovenia as well as abroad, and as a practical result of the work, concrete guidelines for further implementation of the intervention in this field will also be made available.