Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lifelines?
Lifelines is a comprehensive suicide prevention program. It is a whole-school program that educates students on the facts about suicide and their role in suicide prevention. It provides information on where to find suicide prevention resources in the school and within the community.
What age groups are appropriate audiences for Lifelines?
Lifelines was developed specifically for students aged 12 through 17.
Where can Lifelines be implemented?
The program was designed for implementation in middle schools and high schools. It targets the whole school community by providing suicide awareness resources for administrators, faculty and staff, parents, and students. It fits easily into health class programming and lesson plans.
Can Lifelines be used outside of a school setting?
The research and outcomes are based on a school-wide implementation. However, Lifelines can be a successful component to any community-based program, such as Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, etc.
What will participants learn?
Lifelines helps everyone in a school community recognize when a student is at potential risk for suicide and understand how and where to access help. The program also provides basic information about youth suicide.
Training materials are included for faculty and staff that provide accurate and practical information on identifying and referring students who might be at risk for suicide.
Lifelines also includes a presentation for parents that answers questions about youth suicide and prevention and involves them in the school's suicide prevention activities.
What is the price of the Lifelines program?
Lifelines is $149.
What makes up the Lifelines program?
The program is made up of four parts: Administrative Consultation, Faculty and Staff Training, a Parent Workshop, and the Student Curriculum.
Part I, Administrative Consultation, must be completed before any other parts of the Lifelines program can be implemented. It is in this important component that school administrators review their school's internal and external resources for responding to the needs of students who are potentially at suicide risk. Administrators should also update policies and procedures for dealing with suicide attempts and completions. A sample policy is included.
Part II, Faculty and Staff Training, is an in-service training for faculty and all school staff. This training explains the Lifelines approach to youth suicide prevention, reviews current information about youth suicide, and explains the role of school staff in suicide prevention.
Part III, Parent Workshop, must be completed before the delivery of student curriculum. This workshop explains why the school is systematically addressing the problem of youth suicide. Additional informational materials are included that can be either mailed or placed on the school's Web site.
Part IV, Student Curriculum, includes four 45-minute lessons which include detailed lesson plans and video resources that cover facts about suicide and the students' role in suicide prevention. The program also reviews in-school and community resources.
Two videos are included with the program. One shows students a scenario depicting appropriate (as well as inappropriate) responses to a suicidal peer, and one documents an actual response of three students to a suicidal peer after they had participated in Lifelines.
Students participate in role-playing exercises that teach what to do when faced with a suicidal peer, including an emphasis on seeking adult help, and frank discussions on the warning signs of suicide.
Is program implementation training available?
Yes. This one day training is $2,200 plus the trainer's travel expenses. The training does not include the cost of the program.
What was the evaluation process of Lifelines?
Lifelines was evaluated utilizing a Solomon four-group design (Kalafat & Elias, 1994). This design was particularly strong because it allowed for the examination of pre-test as well as program effects. The Lifelines program was given to the experimental group during a required health class (the control group attended a PE class; they received Lifelines instruction the following semester). A total of 253 10th-grade students from two suburban schools participated in the study. Students were not randomly assigned to the health and PE classes; however, an examination of pre-test scores indicated no statistically significant differences in the two groups.
The Lifelines curriculum was studied in two suburban, middle-class schools in the Northeast. Fifty-seven percent of participants were male; the authors found no gender-based differences although they suggest further research is needed in this area. A breakdown of participant ethnicity was not included in the evaluation.
What are the outcomes of Lifelines?
Four outcomes were studied: knowledge about suicide, attitudes toward suicide, responses toward suicidal peers, and satisfaction with the suicide class. Lifelines students demonstrated significantly greater knowledge about suicide when compared with control group students. Lifelines students also demonstrated increased positive attitudes toward suicide prevention, especially attitudes related to help-seeking behavior.
To assess student response to suicidal peers, students were asked to evaluate how they would respond to a possibly suicidal peer and to a clearly suicidal peer. In both cases, Lifelines students responded more appropriately than control group students. No pre-testing effects were found for any of these outcomes: the fact that the students completed a pre-test did not impact their scores on the post-test. Students also rated the Lifelines curriculum more favorably than their regular health class curriculum.
Where can I purchase Lifelines?
The Lifelines program is currently being updated and will be released in November, 2009. If you have programming or grant requirements that need to be met prior to the release date, please contact Laura Strapon, Prevention Market Manager, Hazelden Publishing at lstrapon@hazelden.org.
