School-Based Suicide Intervention with Children and Adolescents

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among youth 10–24 years of age. In 2014, suicide accounted for 5,504 deaths among young people and almost 157,000 hospital visits for self-inflicted injuries were documented (Centers for Disease Control [CDC], 2015). Although death by suicide is relatively infrequent, depression and thoughts of suicide are disturbingly common among high school youth and have increased over the last five years. In 2013, 29.9% of high school students felt so sad or hopeless every day for two or more weeks that they stopped doing some usual activities, 17.0% seriously considered suicide, 13.6% made a suicide plan, 8.0% attempted suicide, and 2.7% sought medical treatment for a suicide attempt (Kann et al., 2014). Risk to youth varies by gender and ethnicity; for example, thoughts of suicide were nearly double among females compared to males, but males accounted for four out of five deaths by suicide among young people. Youth who identified as American Indian/ Alaskan Native were at increased risk of death and Hispanic/Latino(a) youth were at increased risk of suicidal thoughts (CDC, 2015).