1,800 education professionals will receive suicide prevention training organised by the Department of Education this week. They will do so in Barakaldo, in BEC. Representatives of 900 centers providing Primary Education, ESO, Baccalaureate, Vocational Training and Adult Education. The first session took place on Tuesday and participants will receive an eight-hour training.

To the extent that this is a public health problem, the vice-councillor of Education, Begoña Pedrosa, has highlighted that suicide is also a "priority" of the health and education policies of the Basque Government, according to the Basque Government. He has also stressed the importance of building a school that "takes care and promotes" the students' emotional well-being: "It is necessary to educate for coexistence, working on the emotional capacity, promoting dialogic learning and promoting the pedagogy of care".

It is therefore a question of training education professionals to acquire "specific knowledge" to detect young people at risk of suicide, to respond by applying protective measures in the educational field and to be able to target specialist health services.

The activity will bring together representatives of the public and concerted schools of Araba and Gipuzkoa on 27 and 28 March and on 30 and 31 March to the professionals of Bizkaia.

Bizikasi initiative

The training action in suicide prevention is part of the strategy developed by the Departments of Education and Health and presented last October under the title Strategy of Prevention, Intervention and Prevention of Suicidal Behavior in the educational setting. Since 2017, work has been done with Bizikasi.

According to the Basque Government, the aim is to make educational establishments safe and tolerant to situations of harassment. In general, suicide prevention programs include socio-emotional learning activities such as emotional regulation, problem-solving and coping skills, decision-making, positive coexistence, bullying prevention and health education.