Efficacy of Suicide Prevention Programs for Children and Youth

Download or read book Efficacy of Suicide Prevention Programs for Children and Youth written by Bing Guo and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main focus of this review is to present the findings from primary research that assessed the efficacy/effectiveness of suicide prevention programs on school aged children and youth (i.e., ages 5 to 19 years) including school-based or commmity-based suicide prevention programs An assessment tool developed, pre-tested and modified in other Canadian reviews was used to critically appraise the quality of the published studies. Most of the studies focused on the general student population, while a few studies first categorized students as 'at-risk' or 'in need' before the intervention. Six out of 10 studies were rated as moderate to strong in relation to their methodological quality. Two out of these six studies using similar approaches for risk stratification and delivering intervention programs with similar objectives, showed consistent and encouraging evidence on the effects (for example, decreases in depression, hopelessness, stress, anxiety and anger) of their programs. Despite these findings the overall methodological weaknesses and inconsistent findings from the studies indicate that there is insufficient evidence to either support or not to support curriculum-based suicide prevention programs in schools.