Building Youth for the Future

This book is really a reflection of the past more than 20 years of work with teens and suicide prevention in the state of Kentucky. The work to establish the "Stop Youth Suicide Campaign (SYS)" has resulted in contact with many young adults, and we have found that the most important thing for all of them was finding a caring person they trust and can talk to. Because of the constant need, the SYS went from a goal of being a one-year awareness campaign to becoming a major community resource, working with the state and local governments and state legislators to add as many resources as possible. We have witnessed for the first time a drop of youth suicide rates below the national average, according to the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance done biannually by the Center for Disease Control. In this book, we will tackle various topics and specific populations in relation to suicide written by people who work with teens and care about them. Professor Hatim A Omar, MD, FAAP, is professor of paediatrics and obstetrics/gynaecology, Children''s Miracle Network Chair, Division of Adolescent Medicine and Young Parents Program, Kentucky Children''s Hospital, UK Healthcare, Department of Pediatrics, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Joav Merrick, MD, MMedSci, DMSc, born and educated in Denmark is professor of paediatrics at the Division of Pediatrics, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Mt Scopus Campus, Jerusalem, Israel, Kentucky Children''s Hospital, University of Kentucky, Lexington, United States and professor of public health at the Center for Healthy Development, School of Public Health, Georgia State University, Atlanta, United States, the former medical director of the Division for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services, Jerusalem and the founder and director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Israel.