Efficacy of Suicide Prevention Programs for Children and Youth

Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) HTA Report #26.

Given the very broad range of suicide prevention strategies, it is unrealistic to cover all of them in this report. Thus, the main focus of this review is to present the findings from primary research that assessed the efficacy/effectiveness of suicide prevention programs on school aged children and youth (i.e., ages 5 to 19 years) including school-based or community-based suicide prevention programs. The methodology, including the search strategy, selection criteria, and criteria for analyzing the methodological quality of the primary studies, is provided in Appendix A.

This review also briefly summarizes the findings from systematic reviews on risk factors and protective factors for suicidal behaviours among children and youth. Reduction in common risk factors and enhancement of protective factors informs the choice of outcome measures used in the primary studies which were conducted to determine a prevention program’s effect. These systematic reviews were not critically appraised regarding their methodological quality.

NOTE: In 2006 the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research HTA unit moved to IHE. Documents produced in and prior to 2006 have different formats; the format was determined by the agency for which the document was produced.