For Whitney Bischoff, high school was tough. On the first day of her freshman year, a childhood friend committed suicide. Things weren't any better at home — her father died when she was 7 and her mom was an alcoholic with an abusive boyfriend.
She had a hard time making friends.
And when all the stress threatened to overwhelm her, she, too, considered suicide.
"I thought family was everything," Bischoff says. "I thought, if I didn't have family support – what am I going to do? Suicide seemed like the only way out."
As the thoughts persisted, Bischoff started going to group counseling sessions organized by her school in Rapid City, S.D.
But it didn't help. "I felt like it was always so depressing every time we talked," she says. "Having all that negative put to your face as a freshman – it was just a lot to take in."
But then something changed. Rapid City Central High started using a suicide-prevention program called Sources of Strength. The 15-year-old effort is now in more than 250 schools and community centers in 20 states. Researchers and advocates point to it as one of few prevention programs that has research behind it showing it can it work.
[For more of this story, written by Elissa Nadworny, go to http://tpr.org/post/preventing...e-contagion-strength]
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