Suicide is the tenth ranking cause of death in the United States (CDC, 2015); however, alarmingly, suicide is the second leading cause of death in the fifteen to twenty-four age group (CDC, 2015). Drum et al. (2009) surveyed undergraduate students (n = 15,010) from seventy U.S. colleges and universities. The researchers found that in one year, 6%…

Suicide is a leading cause of death of school-aged youth, with adolescent and young adult populations considered to be most at risk for suicide clusters and contagion effects. Suicide clusters have been documented in school districts across the United States, though the degree to which schools are prepared to provide postvention services in the…

Student peer educators have been used by higher education intuitions to influence the education and retention of college students for many years, and most institutions have some type of peer educator program. Newton and Ender (2010) broadly define the role of peer educators as "students who have been selected, trained, and designated by a…

Five out of every 100 children develop serious emotional disturbances. Another 20 to 25 out of every 100 develop less severe emotional problems that can be resolved with proper care. It is this group for whom appropriate intervention can make a difference. This booklet describes the Great Smoky Mountains Study, a longitudinal, population-based…

To learn more about the services available to youth at suicide prevention centers in North Carolina, a survey was conducted with 86 mental health and crisis prevention centers. The 16-item questionnaire examined the availability and extent of services offered by the centers, staffing patterns, sources of funding, and percentage of clientele…

Crisis intervention programs for persons experiencing the sudden death of family members or surviving natural disasters have been advocated as methods of primary prevention, although few have actually been implemented. A program utilizing nurses to deliver grief intervention to parents losing a baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was…

This report describes some of the ethical and practical problems experienced by a group of mental health consultants attempting to initiate a primary prevention mental health program in a three-county area of North Carolina. Project Early Aid was designed to implement a program model that would upgrade both the interpersonal and physical…