NIH report highlights strategies for optimizing youth suicide prevention programs

NIH report highlights strategies for optimizing youth suicide prevention programs:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has issued a final report from its Pathways to Prevention workshop on youth suicide prevention. The abridged version of the final report, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, provides a roadmap for optimizing youth suicide prevention efforts by highlighting strategies for guiding the next decade of research in the area. The strategies identified include recommendations for improving data systems, enhancing data collection and analysis methods, and strengthening the research and practice community.

An accompanying evidence review, also published in Annals of Internal Medicine, suggests that existing national, state, and community data systems should be linked to suicide prevention data as a way to evaluate and enhance suicide prevention efforts. The authors suggest that a national suicide outcomes data repository could be created combining data from several sources to achieve better coverage of suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, and suicide on a national level, and that guidelines could be developed to influence their development and use.