Wednesday, 31 July 2024 SCSR UP IAM's new project "Ker te štekam"
The research team of the Slovenian Centre for Suicide Research UP IAM, under the leadership of the Deputy Head Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vita Poštuvan from the Department of Psychology, was again successful in obtaining research funding. In the period 2024-2026, the Centre's researchers will implement the project Ker te štekam: Razvoj trajnostne mreže strokovnjakov in njihovih veščin za preprečevanje samomorilnega vedenja mladih ter obravnavo posledic samomor. Razvoj trajnostne mreže strokovnjakov in njihovih veščin za preprečevanje samomorilnega vedenja mladih ter obravnavo posledic samomora, funded under the Ministry of Health's call for Development of Mental Health Programmes for Children, Adolescents and Young Adults.
Project leader Dr Vita Poštuvan said: ''Over the last few years, we have developed programmes at our centre, and indeed more widely here and abroad, that effectively address suicidal behaviour. Among these, the programmes that stand out are those that address distress when we recognise the person in contact. Often people are not at their best in such situations and do not know what to say. Effective response programmes exist today, but the problem is to ensure their sustainability and widespread use. This requires considerable resources. This project hopes to address just that: we want to empower as many people as possible who come into contact with vulnerable people so that they know what to do in such situations. It means a lot to people in need, especially young people, to feel that someone understands them, that they have someone to turn to and that someone else is not expendable. It motivates us to be able to help young people with this project."
Due to the nature of their work and the frequency of their contact with young people, professionals in educational institutions, NGOs, health and social care are better placed to access them, implement prevention activities, identify signs of distress and take action. They are key to preventing suicidal behaviour in young people, but often with insufficient or different training. Suicide prevention in schools, in HEIs and in other sectors, is not systematically implemented, leading to visible differences and variable effectiveness of prevention programmes, reflected in lower awareness of suicidal behaviour among young people and of sources of help.
The Ker te štekam project aims to improve knowledge and develop competences to identify distress among young people, to intervene when they are at risk of suicide, to implement mental health and suicide prevention programmes for young people independently, systematically and autonomously, and to intervene after an adolescent suicide. Training a small and geographically dispersed team of professionals to deliver postvention services will thus enable faster and appropriate action to be taken in the event of a young person's death by suicide, thereby reducing the risk of peer imitation, which is markedly high in the aftermath of a death.
