As Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatrists, we will each at one time or another in our career be asked to assist our local communities and schools in responding to a student's suicide.
ASAP President-Elect, Aaron Krasner, M.D., has had recent experience in this obligation as a psychiatrist, when called upon to facilitate a healing response to two consecutive student suicides in Darien, Connecticut this past May.
Per Dr. Krasner, " We know risk factors for completed teen suicide include known psychiatric illness (including substanceabuse), male gender, agitated or impulsive mood states, history of suicidal behavior, environmental factors including prolonged stress of any kind, access to lethal means, and exposure to another person’s suicide or to graphic or sensationalized media accounts of suicide. Sensitivity to this latter factor is critically important in preventing a suicide cluster defined by the CDC as a group of suicides, suicide attempts, or self-harm events that occur closer together in time and space than would normally be expected in a given community."
ASAP is pleased to make three resources available to psychiatrists to have available should they be asked to assist those responding to a student suicide:
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