New Approach to Suicide Prevention

This is what Gatz has to say:

My friend Mike who has spent a significant portion of his life trying to stop suicides ran across an interesting new approach to suicide prevention. This involves social networks and if you like this blurb you can go to the link provided and read the entire article.


'The “contagion” of social networks, Los Angeles Times, Sep. 13, 2010.
Public health researchers are experimenting with new programs that tap
into the power of social networks to promote healthy habits, including
help-seeking for suicidal ideation. The basic approach is to identify
influential members within a social network (classroom, neighborhood,
online community, etc.) and target them with a positive health message
in the hope that it will become “contagious” within the network. As
this article in the Los Angeles Times explains, these experiments have
had mixed results. According to researcher Thomas Valente, who has led
several studies of smoking prevention and drug abuse prevention
programs in schools, efforts to influence behavior may need to be
designed differently for different types of social networks.

Link to the article and excerpt from the LA Times are at:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/13/health/la-he-social-networks-health-20100913