Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe in Israel, Evaluation, Intervention and Prevention

QPR intervention (Question, Persuade & Refer): The QPR prevention program will be used in two modules, one for school staff and one for parents. According to the US Surgeon General's National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (2001), "key gatekeepers" are "people who regularly come into contact with individuals or families in distress" and gatekeeper training has been identified as one of a number of promising prevention strategies.

The awareness programme is comprised of a leaflet, six posters and four seminars. The seminars are made up of one introductory lesson, and two interactive follow-up lessons with role play and one final meeting as a closing/debriefing lesson.

The program's primary objective is to help young people and their parents through the early identification of mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide. Screening strategies are based on the valid premise that suicidal adolescents are under-identified, suffer from an active, often treatable mental illness such as depression and exhibit identifiable risk factors (Gould et al. 2003). A potential shortcoming of screening programs is that asking about suicide could increase suicidal ideation and behaviour. About this issue a recent study (Gould et al . 2005) on over 2300 students reported no evidence of iatrogenic effects of suicide screening and that screening in high schools is a safe component of youth suicide prevention efforts.

The control group will comprise 250 subjects. After the baseline assessment, subjects will be randomized in one of the three intervention arms or in the control group. Individuals in the control group will undergo the same baseline and follow-up evaluations as subjects in the intervention arms and will receive the same leaflet about healthy lifestyles with information about the possibility to seek help for unhealthy, suicidal behaviour and mental health problems. In this arm, no additional intervention will be performed although the possibility of seeking help from mental health resources will be available.