Suicide prevention is a significant issue for all K12 schools. Stone (2021) indicated that every school counselor will provide mental health services to students who have suicidal thoughts or behaviours statistically. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), suicide is the one of the most leading causes of death in individual between ages of 10-19 in the United States (CDC, 2020). In addition, deaths by suicide has increased 57.4% between 2007 to 2018 (Curtin, 2020). A recent report issued by Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT, 2022) highlights the suicide rates all over Turkey. The statistics demonstrated that the northern part of Turkey, especially the city Trabzon has the highest suicide rates than all over Turkey. According to TURKSTAT data, while the current suicide rate was 3.86 per hundred thousand in Turkey in 2022, this figure was 4.13 for Trabzon. 

School counselors have a key role in preventing suicide in K 12 schools. In the line with American School Counseling Association (ASCA) Ethical Standard A.9 (2016) as well as the ASCA position statements (2020) related to suicide prevention/awareness and suicide risk assessment, school counselors are liable to assess suicidal risks of students at K12 schools. 

Somatic Experiencing is a psychobiological approach that focuses on the improvement of capacity and resilience levels without prioritizing pathology. SE does not work on the traumatic event but works on the impact of the traumatic event on the body and autonomic nervous system (Levine, 1997, 2010; Payne, Levine & Crone-Godreau, 2015). The autonomic nervous system has two channels called sympathetic and parasympathetic. When a person encounters a stressful situation or a traumatic event and the trigger is too powerful, extreme activation can emerge in the sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous systems (PNS). When SNS is overcharged; heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate increase, pupils dilate, and the digestive system and salivation decrease. When people are stuck on the parasympathetic level, they can undergo depression, dissociation, burnout, and numbness (Levine, 2010, 2015; Heller ve Heller, 2004). If such high activation continues for a long period, it becomes chronic and can lead to mental health disorders. Therefore, it is crucial to regulate the nervous system and increase the capacity for the containment of emotions and resiliency. A healthy nervous system works in the balance between SNS and PNS in a harmony.  SE focuses on bodily sensations and approaches the impact of traumatic experience with titration, thus, it supports the person to process activation of traumatic events without retraumatizing him/her (Levine,  1997; 2010). SE can be used in working with trauma or stressful or adverse experiences and is an effective approach in emergencies to building coping mechanisms in a short time (Levine; 1997, 2010; Payne et. al, 2015).

The increase in the need for resources to build resilience and coping skills highlighted the need for approaches that will support people in need, especially in professions like teaching. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is an approach that addresses the problems of stress, negative life experiences, and trauma while focusing on the body and its reactions (Levine, 2010). This approach helps to understand the sensations in the body and to build the innate balancing capacity of the nervous system (Brom, et al., 2015; Levine, 2010). This study is aimed to see the effectiveness of SE on school counselors’ coping and self-care skills. Therefore, it aims to support school counselors dealing with most suicidal issues in Turkey.

The effects of SE-based intervention sessions were evaluated in a within-group quasi-experimental design over two sessions with 3 month follow-up. The control group consisted of the teachers who did not want to attend the project. Thus, the potential short intervention was not planned for this group. The experimental group consisted of nine school counselors working at different schools in the northern part of Turkey. The study was announced through social media and the interested school counselors sent email to the researchers. Each potential group member interviewed two group leaders for an initial assessment. During these interviews, participants asked their demographic information (age, education level, job, etc.), situations about getting psychological health from a professional, their resources while coping with stress, and scaling questions about their stress level. Interviews took place during September 2022 and lasted 25 minutes to 40 minutes, with a mean of 35 minutes and a median of 32 minutes. Fourteen people contacted for the interviews and eleven people attended the interviews with the researchers. Nine participants attended the group sessions after the interview. One of them was male and eight of them were females between the ages of 28 to 39 with a mean of 31 and a standard deviation of 1.6. All participants defined themselves as Turkish. Five of them are currently married and three of them have children. Two participants had their masters degree. The tenure of participants between the years of 6 to 11 with a mean of 8 and a standard deviation 2.3. Five participants received psychological help from a practitioner and ended this process before starting this SE project. Four participants were doing physical exercises such as volleyball and swimming which impacted body awareness. The semi-structured interview protocol was developed by researchers to gain the perspective of participants after the SE meetings. Individual interviews with each group member were held during November 2022 and lasted 30 minutes to 45 minutes, with a mean of 40 and a median of 35.

As a result of the preliminary analysis of the semi-structured interviews, three main themes emerged as self-care, awareness, and coping skills. Participants described the self-care activities that they start to practice under the self-care theme. All participants stated that they are practicing the exercises done during the group work. Under the awareness theme, there are two codes as self-awareness and professional awareness. As a part of the self-awareness, six participants stated that they started to understand the connection between body and mind. Four participants stated that their somatic reactions (ie. allergic reactions, stomach ache, back pains) decreased. As a part of professional awareness, participants started to use SE based activities with students, teachers and families and realized the effects of SE on these school components. The third theme named coping skills referred by seven participants which includes expanding coping skills of participants after SE based sessions. Interviews conducted after SE based sessions demonstrated that SE pave the way for huge difference on participants’ life regarding somatic complaints and coping skills in a short time.The study contributes to participants not only to reduce their somatic complaints and to raise new coping skills but also to contribute to people’s lives by providing them with a new tool box which they can use at schools. This study has several limitations beside its contributions. First of all, the number of participants is so small for quantitative analysis, male participant number is limited and the group process might be longer to develop the interaction between group members. On the other hand, this study is crucial to demonstrate the effect of SE with a short term intervention.

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