Help for families of suicide: survivors support program

The Survivors Support Program attempts preventive intervention with a high risk population. As with most preventive efforts in psychiatry, it is difficult to predict who will be most at risk, what services will best meet their needs, and what positive effects are due to the services. To answer these questions through properly controlled and designed experimental programs conforming to scientific methodology would require the investment of much time, personnel and money. To postpone attempts at intervention until answers are provided by such experimental programs would be to ignore the evidence of common sense and clinical experience. The Survivors Support Program demonstrates that a volunteer self-referral service, organized through professional liaison with a community organization and committed to providing service and gathering information, can suggest interim answers to the questions while providing support and counselling to a needy population.