[The process followed by helping peers during their experience with suicidal teenagers: an exploratory study]

The purpose of this qualitative, exploratory and retrospective study is to understand the process followed by helping peers during their experience with a suicidal teenager. Interviews allowed to collect data with young people who had played this role. An analysis using grounded theory gave the following proposal: for youths, their experience was perceived as a heroic mission, first stimulating, then confronting and, finally, enriching. The experience goes through three stages. The first begins with the access to the status of helping peer and is pervaded with the wildly enthusiastic attitude of youth who give themselves the mission to save a suicidal mate. The second is marked by a certain disappointment having considered the facts surrounding the mission and undertaken a fight to save the suicidal mate. At the last stage, after the mission is completed, an attitude of wisdom stands out when the helping peer makes the synthesis of his victories and his defeats. The scarcity of studies on such a controversial subject incites to recommend further research.