Do school-based suicide awareness programs prevent youth suicide?
Despite good intentions and extensive efforts to develop suicide awareness and prevention programs for youth in schools, few programs have been evaluated to see if they work. Many of these programs are designed to reduce the stigma of talking about suicide and encourage distressed youth to seek help. Of the programs that were evaluated, none has proven to be effective. In fact, some programs have had unintended negative effects by making at-risk youth more distressed and less likely to seek help. By describing suicide and its risk factors, some curricula may have the unintended effect of suggesting that suicide is an option for many young people who have some of the risk factors and in that sense “normalize” it—just the opposite message intended. Prevention efforts must be carefully planned, implemented and scientifically tested. Because of the tremendous effort and cost involved in starting and maintaining programs, we should be certain that they are safe and effective before they are
