Ethical dimensions of suicide prevention education in health professions: A narrative review
Year: 2026
Type: review
Abstract: Suicide prevention education is essential for healthcare providers, yet significant ethical gaps exist in how this sensitive topic is taught. Medical educators face complex challenges balancing clinical rigor with ethical responsibilities toward patients and students. This narrative review synthesizes evidence regarding ethical dimensions of suicide prevention education in health professions curricula, identifies gaps in the literature, and proposes a comprehensive ethical framework for teaching suicide assessment and management. Narrative review of literature indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and ERIC (January 2000–March 2026), examining ethical issues in suicide prevention training, stigma reduction, student mental health, cultural competence, and teaching sensitive clinical content; full search strategy and eligibility criteria are reported in the Methods section. While research documents suicide prevention training effectiveness for knowledge, attitudes, and short-term skill acquisition, ethical dimensions of this training remain comparatively underexamined, and existing evidence is concentrated in a small number of high-income countries, chiefly the United States. Major challenges include: protecting patient confidentiality and dignity; reducing provider and self-stigma; supporting student psychological safety without compromising competency development; incorporating cultural competence; managing appropriate student-patient interactions; and addressing systemic inequities in suicide risk. Ethical suicide prevention education must systematically integrate principles of patient protection, student welfare, cultural humility, and systemic equity. These conclusions are drawn from a narrative rather than systematic synthesis of a still-developing evidence base, and should be read as a framework for further empirical testing rather than as established best practice. Implementation requires explicit institutional commitment, faculty development, and ongoing curriculum refinement guided by both ethical analysis and empirical evaluation. To the author’s knowledge, this is among the first reviews to map systematically the ethical—rather than purely clinical—dimensions of suicide prevention education across the health professions, and to translate them into an actionable six-component framework for curriculum design. At a moment when medical schools worldwide are expanding suicide prevention training in response to rising global concern about suicide and about the mental health of health professions students themselves, this synthesis offers educators, curriculum committees, and policymakers a provisional and practical ethical roadmap: it clarifies how such training might be delivered without compromising patient dignity, student wellbeing, cultural diversity, or equity, while identifying the empirical work still needed to confirm these recommendations.
Source: Scientific Reviews
Author: Mehdi Sayyah
Institution: Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7204085383