Abstract
Objective:
Because suicide is among the major reasons of mortality among people ages between15 to 24, prevention programs have been developed. Although many researches were made on prevention of suicide in adolescents in western countries, in Turkey there are only a few researches done in this area. This paper is a review of the literature about the topic and discusses the effectiveness of school based suicide prevention programs.
Method:
Different data bases were searched by using key words ‘adolescent suicide’, ‘school based’ and ‘prevention’, and full text articles were reached.
Conclusion:
Suicide prevention programmes are conducted in three areas which are school based, public based and helth care sysyem based. Because adolescents spend most of their time in school, school based prevention prorammes have very much importance for this age group. Studies on this topic suggest that suicidal attempts during adolescence is an important problem and prevention programmes are needed. Because too many factors play role in dynamics of suicide, it is not an easy job to decrease suicidal thoughts and to prevent suicidal attempts of adolescents. And for this reason it is planned more comprehensive studies in western countries.
Discussion:
Although too much research is done on adolescent suicides and the effectiveness of prevention programs in western countries, in Turkey, only a few investigations have been done. Because of increasing adolescent suicide rates in our country, studies should also be conducted about this area in our conutry and prevention programmes should be planned.
Keywords: Suicide, adolescents, prevention programmes
