It’s OK to talk to kids about suicide
Asking teenagers about suicide doesn’t seem to make them more likely to contemplate it, as some parents and school officials fear.
In fact, a new study has found that asking troubled students about any such impulses appears to ease their distress and might make some of them less likely to try suicide.
The results confirm what many mental health experts already think and should alleviate fears among some parents and schools that just mentioning suicide might plant the idea in a teen’s mind, said study author Madelyn Gould, a researcher at Columbia University and New York Psychiatric Institute.
Her study involved 2,342 students at six suburban New York high schools who answered two mental health questionnaires two days apart.
The study appears in the April 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
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