Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for teens and young adults in the U.S. A peer-led program called Sources of Strength aims to change that—and research suggests it’s working. According to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in January, the program’s model reduces suicide attempts among high-school students by 29%.
“It’s a really rare bright spot in the field of suicide prevention and the field of youth mental health,” says Scott LoMurray, CEO of Sources of Strength. Instead of a reactive response, or springing into crisis mode after tragedy strikes, “Our vision is to empower a well world. We really feel like wellness is the goal, health is the goal, and then prevention is an outcome of that.”
Sources of Strength partners with hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schools across the U.S.; the programming looks slightly different depending on students’ age. In secondary schools, peer leaders are trained to help their fellow students build resilience, foster social ties with one another, and increase protective factors by, for example, participating in activities like journaling, exercising, and reading. “Our students aren’t junior psychologists who are just supposed to solve and fix all of their friends’ problems,” LoMurray says. “They’re connectors who help when they see that somebody's struggling.”
If a peer leader sees that a classmate has become more withdrawn, for example, they might check in and tell them what they've noticed, and ask what's going on in a caring way. In addition to learning how to have those conversations and offer support, teens are trained on how to intervene even earlier, to prevent people from getting to that dark place. “As a field, we spend a lot of time talking about the leading causes of death,” LoMurray says. “We’re really trying to spend energy cultivating the leading causes of life.”