Substance Abuse and Suicide: Promoting Resilience Against Self-Destructive Behavior in Youth

Substance abuse & suicide have been recognized as major self-destructive behaviours of youth, have strong co-morbidity, & have substantial overlap with regard to risk & protective factors. This article summarizes information on the prevalence of these behaviours, on risk & protective factors, & on the effectiveness of existing prevention programs. A co-ordinated, resilience-building prevention strategy is proposed which addresses generic & domain-specific knowledge & skills. (54 refs.)