By this fall, 70 universities across the country will roll out an online program to identify troubled students and prevent suicide.
The program, created by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, identifies troubled students anonymously through their responses to a voluntary survey that is E-mailed out to the entire campus community, the Los Angeles Times reports. If survey answers raise red flags, a counselor will initiate contact and invite the student to continue communicating — still anonymously — via a dialogue on the Web site.
The goal of the online dialogue is to get troubled students to agree to a face-to-face meeting with a counselor, as 80% of students who commit suicide do not seek services from counseling centers on their campuses, according to Ann Haas, a project specialist for the foundation.
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