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

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