Just had a chance to read a report put out by well meaning people
on the topic of suicide prevention in youth. In that report the author kept
repeating about the many community and school-based programs that have been
proven to prevent youth suicide. While I wish that this was true, it is simply
not the case.
So I am going to write a few blogs about how we know if a program
actually prevents youth suicide or not. The first issue is what does the
program measure as an outcome?
If a program intends to prevent suicide it must
measure suicide. No other measure can be substituted. To my knowledge, there is
no data available on this key outcome variable in reports about these community
and school-based programs. Instead, we read that some programs increase knowledge
about suicide or even decrease the incidence of self-harm behaviors over a
short period of time. These are what we call proxy measures and these do not
predict changes in suicide rates. We have many examples of interventions that
change proxy measures and yet have no impact on the key outcome measure. You
can not determine the depth of a well by measuring the length of the pump
handle!
Unfortunately, too many people use these proxy
measures as “proof” of suicide prevention and go about putting these programs
into place. This is a big problem. Not only do we not know if these programs
decrease suicide or not, but we do not know if they do any harm! Some early
research showed that well intended school interventions actually increased
suicide rates! And, guess what, the decrease in suicide rates begin well before
suicide prevention programs were put into place and occurred in locations where
these programs never existed!
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. “It
is not enough to do something. It is imperative that we do the right thing”.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Remember all these cautions?”
Could be that they apply to so called suicide prevention programs also?
--Stan
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