How Health Care Professionals Help Prevent Teen Suicide
Health care professionals can play an important role in teen suicide prevention:
- Health care professionals can serve as a resource for parents, teachers, school personnel, clergy, and community groups that work with youth about the issue of adolescent suicide, sharing information about risk factors for suicide.
- Health care professionals should routinely screen youth, asking questions about depression, suicidal thoughts, and other risk factors associated with suicide.
- During routine evaluations, health care professionals need to ask whether firearms are kept in the home and discuss with parents the risks of firearms as specifically related to adolescent suicide. When an adolescent is at high risk for suicide, parents should be advised to remove guns and ammunition from the house.
- Health care professionals should recognize the medical and psychiatric needs of the suicidal adolescent and work closely with families and other professionals involved in the management and follow-up of youth who are at risk or have attempted suicide.
- Health care professionals should become familiar with community, state, and national resources that are concerned with youth suicide, including mental health agencies, family and children's services, crisis hotlines, and crisis intervention centers. Working relationships should be developed between primary care providers and colleagues in child and adolescent psychiatry, clinical psychology, and other mental health professions to manage the care of adolescents at risk for suicide optimally.[1]
- American Academy of Pediatrics (2000). Suicide and Suicide Attempts in Adolescents: Policy Statement, Pediatrics, 105(4), 871-874