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Student assistance program outcomes for students at risk for suicide.
Virginia Sue Biddle1, John Kern, David A Brent
11Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Summary
Pennsylvania's Student Assistance Program (SAP) helps suicidal students. Specific services within SAP significantly reduced negative behaviors, and non-participants had higher suicide rates.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Adolescent Psychology
- Educational Psychology
Background:
- Pennsylvania's Student Assistance Program (SAP) is a long-standing initiative for adolescent suicide prevention.
- Despite 27 years of funding, no statewide outcome studies using case-level data have been conducted for SAP.
- Adolescent suicide remains a critical public health concern requiring effective intervention strategies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the effectiveness of the Student Assistance Program (SAP) in addressing drug/alcohol-related behaviors and suspensions among suicidal students.
- To identify specific SAP services that best predict the cessation of undesirable outcomes in referred students.
- To compare suicide rates between suicidal students who participated in SAP and those who did not.
Main Methods:
- Logistic regression analysis was employed to examine the relationship between SAP participation and student outcomes.
- Case-level data from referred students were analyzed to assess the impact of SAP services.
- Statistical significance (p<.01) was used to determine the predictive power of SAP services.
Main Results:
- Ten out of 46 SAP services were identified as significant predictors (p<.01) for the cessation of drug/alcohol-related behaviors and suspensions.
- While no study participants died by suicide, 42 students out of 374,626 referred students died by suicide.
- Suicidal students who did not participate in SAP exhibited double the rate of suicide compared to those who participated.
Conclusions:
- SAP demonstrates potential in mitigating negative behaviors among suicidal adolescents.
- There is a critical need for comprehensive suicide risk assessment for all referred students, including those with non-suicidal reasons for referral.
- Further research should investigate educational outcomes, substance-related crimes, overdoses, and postmortem school-related factors to enhance prevention and intervention efforts.
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