Does suicide screening prompt suicides?
With many teenagers suffering from undiagnosed mental illness, experts have recommended screening kids for risk of suicide. But some worry that just asking kids questions about suicide will get them thinking about killing themselves. Researchers in New York recently carried out the first-ever study on whether suicide screening increases the risk of suicide. What the researchers wanted to know: Does asking high schoolers about suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts make them think more about suicide? What they did: At six high schools in Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties in New York, classes were randomly assigned to two halves of the experiment. On the first day of screening, all of the kids took a baseline set of surveys, which included questions about drug use, mood, and depression. In classes that had been put in the experimental group, the students also completed surveys on suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. Those surveys were left out for the other classes (the contro
