Prevention would be a very effective way to limit suicide among young people, according to the results of a study published in the scientific journal The Lancet. It would reduce its rate for this category of the population by 50%, if young people are involved in the program.
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden compared three suicide prevention programs among 11,000 15-year-old students from ten European Union countries.
The first program worked on teacher training. The second attempted to detect the students most at risk with screening tests. And the third strategy was to involve young people in prevention.
For 4 weeks, the students underwent a 5-hour training course teaching them the signs associated with the risk of suicide.
If the first two trainings do not seem to have borne fruit, the program involving young people has reduced suicide attempts by 50% after one year.
“The study shows that it is possible to implement suicide prevention programs in schools with good results. Now we can take the next step: develop the method on the web or as a mobile phone application to reach as many young people as possible, ”says Danuta Wasserman, director of the National Center for Suicide and Prevention Research. of mental health problems (PNSA) at the Karolinska Institute.
More than 11,000 people die each year in France by suicide. Suicide is the cause of one in fifty deaths. Nearly 200,000 people are treated each year by hospital emergencies after a suicide attempt, according to 2014 figures from theNational Suicide Observatory.
Read also:
Suicide rate increases along with unemployment
Suicides: the perverse effects of warnings against antidepressants
Suicide: the sun would have a deterrent effect
