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Suicide prevention and schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2016

Chris Cantor
Chris Cantor*
Affiliation:
Suicide Research and Prevention Program, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland
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Extract

I recently heard of a principal who had been enthusiastically promoting a suicide prevention program in his school. The program had been going for two years and was considered effective. It was a small school and I calculated that statistically one suicide might be expected every 15 years. The claim for efficacy regarding suicide prevention seemed premature although the program may have been helpful in other ways.

A recent analysis of the efficacy of state initiatives in the USA addressing youth suicide reported encouraging results with most (non-school) initiatives (Lester, 1992). However, with school programs the more students exposed, the greater the increase in youth suicide rates was found. School initiatives in this area seem to have an abundance of enthusiasm and goodwill but have lacked the critical appraisal necessary for success. It is time for enthusiastic chaos to be replaced with more level-headed approaches.

Type
Field reports
Information
Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools , Volume 5 , November 1995 , pp. 81 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Cantor, C.H. (1994). Clinical management of parasiticides: Critical issues in the 1990s. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 28, 212–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felner, R.D., Adan, A.M., & Silverman, M.M. (1992). Risk assessment and prevention of youth suicide in schools and educational contexts. In Maris, R.W., Maltsberger, A.L., Maltsberger, J.T., & Yufit, R.I., (Eds). Assessment and prediction of suicide. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Lester, D. (1992). State initiatives in addressing youth suicide: Evidence for their effectiveness. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 27, 75–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maris, R.W. (1981). Pathways to suicide: A survey of self-destructive behaviors. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar