The number of suicide attempts among students has been on the rise, and teachers are at a loss to know how to help them, the Večernji List daily says on Sunday, referring to findings of a survey presented at a conference of school psychologists.

Close to three in four teachers feel insecure about their own ability to help students with mental health issues and they consider it part of their daily work routine and have already encountered situations when they held individual consultations with students regarding their mental health.

Only 37.1% of the surveyed teachers in primary and secondary schools know how to recognise symptoms of depression, depression caused by alcohol consumption or suicidal thoughts in students.

The findings were presented at the first national conference of school psychologists that was held in Zagreb on Friday.

They reveal an unpleasant truth – one in four students in Croatian schools suffers from anxiety-related problems that often turn into depressive moods and clinical depression, accompanied by self-harm and suicidal thoughts while most teachers do not know how to recognise alarming signals and provide psychological help to them, says the daily.