“We Never Saw It Coming”: Understanding Teen Self Harm and Suicide - Some Thoughts For Parents and Caregiver

Caveat - As the title suggests, this article contains discussions surrounding the topics of self harm and suicide

This weekend, we assisted a parent who was deeply concerned about their 15 year old teen and their behaviours involving self-harm and suicidal thoughts. It was a difficult reminder of why conversations about youth suicide and self harm, as uncomfortable and frightening as they can be, cannot be avoided.

During Darren’s policing career, he responded to numerous deaths by suicide, including those involving teenagers, as well as the suicide of a member of his own police department that he attended as a first responder with the officer’s wife who reported the incident after their child found their father. Suicide has also touched our family personally. These experiences do not make this topic any easier to write about, in fact, they make it more difficult. We understand why many parents and caregivers would rather scroll past an article like this than stop and read it. Suicide is frightening to contemplate, particularly when it involves our children, and there are many reasons why families may hesitate to discuss it openly, some of which we will explore throughout this article.

However, avoiding the conversation does not make the issue disappear. This is a topic that needs to be brought out of the darkness and into the light, not to frighten parents, caregivers, or educators, but to better prepare them. The more comfortable we become talking about self-harm, suicidal thoughts, warning signs, emotional distress, and where to turn for help, the better positioned we are to recognize when a young person may be struggling and to respond with compassion, curiosity, connection, and appropriate professional support when it is needed.

There are few sentences more heartbreaking for a parent or caregiver to say after a young person attempts or dies by suicide than, “We never saw it coming.” Those words can carry an enormous amount of grief, confusion, guilt, and unanswered questions. Parents and caregivers may replay conversations, behaviours, text messages, arguments, changes in friendships, school challenges, and seemingly insignificant moments over and over again, wondering whether there was something they missed or something they should have done differently. However, conversations about youth suicide prevention need to be handled with tremendous care because suicide is extraordinarily complex. There is no single behaviour, personality type, family circumstance, social media platform, life event, or checklist that can reliably predict which young person will experience suicidal thoughts or attempt suicide.

This is an important starting point because much of the public messaging surrounding youth suicide prevention focuses on “recognizing the warning signs.” Yes, warning signs matter, and parents and caregivers should absolutely learn about them. However, we believe prevention education needs to go deeper than simply providing families with a checklist of behaviours to watch for. Parents and caregivers also need to understand why warning signs can sometimes be subtle, why they can resemble ordinary adolescent behaviour, why young people may intentionally hide what they are experiencing, and why adults themselves can sometimes hesitate to ask difficult questions or seek professional help when something doesn’t feel right.

The goal should never be to frighten parents and caregivers into believing that every mood change, closed bedroom door, argument, poor grade, friendship problem, or difficult day represents a mental health crisis. Adolescence is naturally a period of significant emotional, neurological, social, physical, and developmental change. Rather, the goal should be to help parents become more familiar with their child’s behavioural and emotional baseline so they are better positioned to notice meaningful changes, remain curious about what those changes might mean, create opportunities for conversation, and seek professional assistance when circumstances warrant it.

Suicide Does Not Belong to a Particular “Type” of Family

One misconception that can unintentionally create a dangerous sense of security is the belief that youth and teen suicide primarily occurs in families where significant problems are already visible. Parents and caregivers may understandably look at their child and think, “They have lots of friends”, “They’re doing well at school”, “They’re involved in sports”, “We have a good relationship”, or “They seem happy.” These are certainly positive and potentially protective aspects of a young person’s life, but none should be interpreted as proof that a teenager cannot also be experiencing depression, anxiety, overwhelming emotional distress, hopelessness, self-harm, or suicidal thoughts at the same time.

A young person can be deeply loved and still struggle. They can have supportive parents and caregivers and still struggle. They can earn excellent grades, play competitive sports, have a large circle of friends, maintain a part-time job, post smiling photographs online, joke with their siblings, play video games with friends, and participate in family activities while privately carrying emotional pain that the people closest to them may not fully understand. Human beings, including teenagers, are capable of presenting very differently on the outside from what they are experiencing internally.

This does not mean parents and caregivers should become suspicious of happiness or begin looking for hidden darkness behind every smile, as that would replace awareness with anxiety, which is not helpful. It does mean we should be cautious about assuming that outward success, popularity, achievement, or family connection automatically tells us everything about a young person’s emotional well being. Sometimes the teenager sitting beside us at the dinner table may be carrying something significant that nobody else in the room knows about.

Why Some Teens Don’t Tell Their Parents

Parents and caregivers will sometimes tell us, “My child knows they can talk to me about anything.” We hope that is true, and building that kind of relationship is one of the most important things parents can do. However, believing our children can talk to us does not necessarily mean they always will talk to us, particularly when what they are experiencing involves shame, fear, embarrassment, hopelessness, relationships, sexuality, bullying, mental health, self-harm, or thoughts of suicide.

There are many reasons a young person might remain silent. They may not fully understand what they are feeling themselves. They may worry their parents or caregivers will panic, become angry, blame someone, contact the school immediately, remove their phone, restrict their independence, insist on counselling, or treat them differently. Some teenagers fear disappointing their parents or caregivers, while others believe that acknowledging their emotional pain will make them appear weak. There are also young people who stay silent because they are trying to protect the adults they love. They may know that a parent or caregiver is already dealing with work stress, financial pressure, relationship challenges, illness in the family, or other responsibilities and think, “They already have enough to worry about. I don’t want to add to it.”

This is why silence should never automatically be interpreted as evidence that everything is okay. At the same time, parents and caregivers should not attempt to force disclosure through interrogation, surveillance, or repeated questioning. One of the most valuable protective environments we can create is a home where difficult conversations are possible without a young person immediately fearing judgment, punishment, humiliation, or an emotional explosion. Parents and caregivers will naturally have strong emotions when a child shares something frightening, but whenever possible, our first response should communicate, “I’m glad you told me, I’m listening, and we are going to figure this out together.”

Warning Signs Are Often About Changes, Not Checkboxes

Parents and caregivers are frequently provided lists of suicide warning signs, and these resources can be extremely valuable. However, checklists can also unintentionally create the impression that suicide risk can be identified through a predictable collection of behaviours. Human behaviour is rarely that simple, particularly during adolescence. Changes in sleep, mood, appetite, friendships, academic performance, interests, substance use, risk-taking, irritability, anxiety, hopelessness, social withdrawal, or participation in previously enjoyed activities can sometimes signal emotional distress, but many of these behaviours can also occur during ordinary adolescent development.

This is why context and patterns matter. A teenager sleeping until noon on a Saturday is not necessarily experiencing depression. Wanting more privacy from parents or caregivers can be a normal part of growing independence. Friendship groups change, romantic relationships begin and end, and academic motivation fluctuates. Teenagers can be irritable, emotional, enthusiastic, withdrawn, energetic, and exhausted, sometimes within the same week. Looking at any single behaviour in isolation can therefore be misleading.

What may deserve greater attention is a meaningful departure from that particular young person’s normal behaviour, especially when changes persist, intensify, occur across several areas of their life, or appear alongside statements suggesting hopelessness, worthlessness, feeling like a burden, wanting to disappear, having no future, or believing that others would be better off without them. Parents and caregiver know their child’s normal patterns in ways that a generic checklist never can, which is why sometimes the most important observation is simply, “Something about my child feels different.”

That feeling is not a diagnosis, and It does not automatically mean a child is suicidal or experiencing a mental-health disorder. However, it may be a reason to become more curious rather than immediately dismissing the change as “just being a teenager.”

Ask One More Question

One challenge in family communication is that we often ask questions that almost automatically produce one word answers. We ask, “How was school?” and receive, “Fine.” We ask, “Everything okay?” and hear, “Yep.” We ask, “Anything happen today?” and receive, “Nope.” Technically, communication has occurred, but very little meaningful information has actually been exchanged.

When something feels different, more specific observations can create better opportunities for conversation. A parent or caregiver might say, “You haven’t seemed like yourself lately, and I’ve noticed you’ve been spending a lot more time alone. Is something going on?” Another might say, “You seem really overwhelmed with school this week. Tell me what’s happening.” The difference is subtle but important. Rather than demanding an explanation, the parent is communicating that they have noticed a change and are available to listen.

Sometimes the answer will still be, “I’m fine.” Parents and caregivers do not always need to push harder in that moment. Unless there is an immediate safety concern, leaving the conversational door open can sometimes be more effective than trying to force it open. Saying, “Okay, I just wanted you to know that I noticed, and if something is going on, I’m here,” communicates something extremely powerful to a young person, that being I see you, I care about you, and you have somewhere to go when you’re ready to talk.

Sometimes Parents Are Silent Too

There is another side of this conversation that we believe receives far less attention. Sometimes it isn’t only the teenager who is reluctant to talk about mental health. Parents and caregivers can be reluctant as well. A parent or caregiver may privately search online for information about depression but tell nobody that they are worried about their child. Another may notice significant changes in their teenager but hesitate to contact a counsellor because they fear they are overreacting. Someone may see an advertisement for a suicide-prevention workshop but avoid attending because they worry other parents and caregivers will wonder why they are there. A parent may even have access to confidential mental health resources through their workplace but never use them because they are uncertain about how private the service actually is.

This reluctance should not automatically be interpreted as denial or indifference. Sometimes it’s about stigma, privacy, fear of what we might discover, and sometimes parents and caregivers simply don’t know where to start. Acknowledging that we need information about suicide can feel uncomfortably close to acknowledging that suicide could somehow touch our own family, and that can be an extremely difficult possibility for any parent or caregiver to contemplate.

This is why schools, healthcare providers, workplaces, parent organizations, and community groups should think not only about whether mental health resources exist, but also about how easy and comfortable they are to access. A resource that technically exists but feels embarrassing, complicated, highly visible, or stigmatizing to use may remain untouched by the very people it was designed to help. Normalizing mental-health education before a crisis occurs can make seeking information feel less like an admission that something is wrong and more like another ordinary part of parenting education.

Learning About Suicide Prevention Does Not Mean Something Is Wrong With Your Child

We learn CPR without expecting someone’s heart to stop. We learn first aid without expecting our child to experience a serious injury. We teach water safety without assuming our child is going to drown, and we teach young people how to respond to fires without expecting our house to burn down. We do these things because preparation gives us knowledge that may become important during circumstances we hope never occur.

Mental health and suicide prevention education should be approached in much the same way. Parents and caregivers should feel comfortable learning about warning signs, protective factors, how to respond to difficult disclosures, what questions to ask, where professional resources exist, and what to do during an immediate crisis even when there is absolutely no reason to believe their child is currently suicidal. Learning about suicide prevention does not mean parents and caregivers are expecting tragedy. It means they are better prepared to respond appropriately if their child, their child’s friend, another family member, or someone else in their community ever needs support.

Prevention is often most effective when education occurs before prevention becomes intervention.

Don’t Let the Fear of Overreacting Prevent You From Reacting

It has been our experience that parents and caregivers frequently worry about making too much of something. “What if it’s just hormones?”, “What if they’re just having a bad week?”, “What if I embarrass them?”, “What if they get angry with me?”, “What if asking makes things worse?” These concerns are understandable because no parent or caregiver wants to unnecessarily frighten their child or turn ordinary adolescent challenges into a medical emergency.

One concern that deserves particular attention is the persistent myth that asking a young person directly about suicide might somehow place the idea into their head (1)(2). This fear can prevent adults from asking a question that may be extremely important. When there is legitimate reason for concern, asking directly and compassionately about suicidal thoughts does not create those thoughts. Instead, it can provide a young person with an opportunity to disclose something they may have been carrying alone.

Parents and caregivers should also understand the difference between noticing something and diagnosing something. You do not need to determine whether your child has depression, an anxiety disorder, or another mental health condition, that responsibility belongs to appropriately qualified professionals. A parent or caregiver’s responsibility is much more practical, it’s noticing meaningful changes, asking questions, listening carefully, taking concerning statements seriously, and seeking professional assistance when needed.

When Your Teen Tells You Something That Frightens You

Imagine your teenager tells you that they have been thinking about hurting themselves or that they don’t want to be alive anymore. For most parents and caregivers, hearing those words would immediately activate every protective instinct they have. Fear, confusion, guilt, anger, disbelief, and an overwhelming desire to fix the situation may arrive simultaneously. Those reactions are human and understandable, but the young person standing in front of us needs our response more than they need our reaction.

Whenever possible, listen before lecturing. Avoid immediately minimizing what they are feeling with statements such as, “You have so much to live for,” or “Your life isn’t that bad.” Avoid turning the conversation into a discussion about how much their disclosure hurts you or how devastated the family would be without them. Those statements may come from love, but a young person who is already experiencing emotional distress may hear them as additional guilt or responsibility.

Instead, communicate that you are glad they told you, that you believe them, that you take what they are saying seriously, and that they do not have to manage this alone. A disclosure involving suicidal thoughts requires appropriate professional assessment. Parents and caregivers should never feel that they are expected to determine the seriousness of suicide risk by themselves.

Parenting does not require becoming your child’s therapist, psychologist, or mental health clinician. It requires recognizing when what your child is experiencing has moved beyond what parental love, support, conversation, and reassurance alone can reasonably address, and then helping them access appropriate professional care. However, this is often where one of the most frustrating and frightening challenges for families begins.

When a young person is experiencing an immediate mental health crisis and there is concern that they may be at imminent risk of harming themselves, emergency intervention is generally available through hospital emergency departments and other crisis services. In those moments, the priority is understandably immediate safety, assessment, stabilization, and determining what needs to happen next. For a parent or caregiver who has just learned that their child is self harming or experiencing suicidal thoughts, simply getting through those first hours or days can feel overwhelming.

The greater challenge can sometimes emerge after the immediate crisis has passed. A young person may be assessed, stabilized, and eventually discharged back into the care of their family, but stabilization should not be confused with recovery. The underlying emotional, psychological, social, or psychiatric challenges that contributed to the crisis may still exist and require ongoing professional attention. This is often the point where parents discover that accessing consistent, longer term counselling, psychological services, psychiatric assessment, or specialized youth mental health treatment can be difficult because of waitlists, limited community resources, eligibility requirements, availability of specialists, geography, and, in some circumstances, the financial cost of private care.

This can leave families in an incredibly difficult position. Parents and caregivers may leave an emergency department relieved that their child is coming home, while simultaneously wondering, “What do we do now?” They may suddenly find themselves trying to navigate referrals, appointments, school supports, family doctors, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, community programs, insurance coverage, and waiting lists, all while continuing to support a young person who may still be emotionally vulnerable. For parents and caregivers who have never navigated the mental health system before, it can feel like being handed responsibility for something enormously important without being given a clear roadmap for what comes next.

This is also why we need to be careful about telling parents to simply “get professional help” as though accessing that help is always quick, easy, affordable, or available. Seeking help and actually being able to obtain timely, appropriate, and sustained help can be two very different things. Families can do everything we ask of them, recognize that something is wrong, take it seriously, reach out for assistance, advocate for their child, and still encounter significant barriers to ongoing care.

None of this means parents should stop seeking professional support when their child needs it, quite the opposite. It means we need to acknowledge the reality families can face and encourage them to continue advocating, asking questions, exploring available community and school-based resources, working with their family healthcare providers, and seeking appropriate alternatives when one pathway is unavailable or significantly delayed. It also means that our broader conversations about youth suicide prevention cannot end with telling young people to “reach out” or parents to “get help.” If we are going to encourage families to reach for professional support, we also need mental-health systems with the capacity to reach back. Unfortunately, this is something that is severely lacking in many communities.

Parents cannot and should not be expected to replace trained mental health professionals while they wait. What they can continue to provide is something professionals cannot replace, a consistent, caring, connected adult who takes their child’s experience seriously, continues to listen, remains engaged, advocates for appropriate care, and reminds their child through both words and actions that they do not have to navigate what they are experiencing alone.

Connection Is Built Long Before a Crisis

One of the most important things we have learned through our work with youth and teens is that meaningful conversations rarely begin with the most difficult topic. They are built through hundreds, and often thousands, of ordinary interactions that occurred before that difficult conversation ever became necessary. Driving somewhere together, sitting at the kitchen table, walking the dog, sharing a meal, listening to a story about a friendship problem that may seem insignificant to an adult, discussing a video game, talking about something that happened online, or simply spending time together all contribute to the relationship foundation that may eventually determine whether a young person feels comfortable approaching a parent when something serious happens.

This is why we continually emphasize relationship before dependency. We want our children to gradually become more independent as they grow, but we also want them to know that independence does not mean they must handle everything alone. The goal is not to create a teenager who needs a parent to solve every problem. The goal is to create a relationship where that teenager knows they can still come to their parent when a problem becomes bigger than they know how to manage.

Parents and caregivers will not always get these moments right. Sometimes we interrupt, sometimes we lecture when we should listen, sometimes we react emotionally, sometimes we misunderstand what our child is trying to tell us., and sometimes our teenager wants absolutely nothing to do with us. Healthy parent-child connection does not require perfection, it requires consistency, repair when we make mistakes, and repeatedly communicating that our relationship is strong enough to handle difficult conversations.

Technology Is Part of the Conversation, But It Isn’t the Entire Conversation

For today’s youth and teens, emotional life does not exist exclusively offline or online. Their world is increasingly an “onlife” world where friendships, relationships, education, entertainment, identity, conflict, belonging, and communication move continuously between physical and digital environments. A disagreement that begins at school may continue through a group chat that evening. A romantic relationship may exist both face to face and through messaging. Bullying can follow a young person home through their phone. Social comparison can be amplified through algorithmically curated feeds, while distressing or harmful content can sometimes appear without a young person actively searching for it.

Technology can also provide connection, community, creativity, friendship, education, entertainment, and access to mental-health information and support. This is why reducing the youth mental health conversation to “screens are causing the problem” can distract us from understanding what is actually happening in a particular young person’s life (3). Technology may sometimes amplify a problem, facilitate it, expose a child to it, or provide a place where the problem becomes visible, but the underlying issue often involves deeply human experiences such as rejection, loneliness, humiliation, fear, belonging, identity, relationships, or emotional distress.

Instead of only asking, “How much time are you spending online?” parents and caregivers can also become curious about what is actually happening there. “How are your group chats going?”, “Has anyone been bothering you online?”, “Is anything you’re seeing online stressing you out?”, “What kinds of things have been showing up in your feed lately?”, “Is anything happening online that you haven’t known how to tell us about?” These questions provide much more useful insight than screen time numbers alone.

Privacy Should Not Become Isolation

Teenagers need privacy, and they need increasing independence and opportunities to develop an identity that is separate from their parents or caregivers. They need space to build friendships, make decisions, solve problems, make mistakes, and gradually develop the skills required for adulthood. Respecting this developmental need is an important part of parenting adolescents.

However, there is a significant difference between respecting privacy and becoming disconnected. Parents and caregivers can give teenagers space while still remaining emotionally available. We can avoid unnecessary surveillance while remaining actively engaged in their lives. We can respect independence while still noticing significant changes in behaviour. We can allow our children to solve age appropriate problems independently while making it unmistakably clear that they never have to navigate something frightening, dangerous, or overwhelming entirely by themselves.

The goal should not be to know everything our teenager thinks, says, searches, messages, or feels, that is neither realistic nor healthy. The goal is to maintain enough connection that when something becomes too heavy for them to carry alone, they know exactly where they can bring it.

Parents and Caregivers Need Support Too

When a young person experiences significant mental health challenges, the impact can extend throughout the entire family. Parents and caregivers may experience fear, exhaustion, guilt, uncertainty, disrupted sleep, difficulties concentrating at work, financial strain, relationship stress, and an overwhelming feeling that every parenting decision suddenly carries enormous consequences. Many continue going to work, attending meetings, answering emails, preparing meals, driving children to activities, and smiling when someone casually asks, “How are things?”, while privately carrying an enormous emotional weight that very few people know exists.

Some parents and caregivers are reluctant to seek help for themselves because they believe every available resource should be directed toward their child. Others feel guilty talking about their own emotional strain because they believe their child’s experience is more important. However, supporting a young person through a mental health crisis can be extremely difficult, and parents or caregivers also deserve support. That assistance might come from a family physician, psychologist, counsellor, trusted friend, parent support organization, school professional, community service, or confidential workplace assistance program.

Seeking support for yourself does not mean taking attention away from your child. In many circumstances, it can help you remain emotionally and physically capable of continuing to support them.

Awareness Without Fear

When discussing youth suicide, we believe it is extremely important that prevention messaging does not unintentionally leave parents and caregivers believing catastrophe is waiting around every corner. Fear should never be the objective, instead, awareness, education, connection, and preparation should be.

Parents and caregivers do not need to constantly watch their children, inspect every digital conversation, or interpret every bad mood as evidence of a mental-health crisis. They do not need to become amateur psychologists or repeatedly question teenagers about whether they are suicidal. What parents and caregivers can do is remain meaningfully engaged in their child’s life, understand their normal patterns of behaviour, pay attention to significant or persistent changes, ask thoughtful questions, listen carefully to the answers, take concerning statements seriously, and become familiar with professional resources before they are urgently needed.

Most importantly, we can work toward creating families where asking for help is not treated as weakness, embarrassment, or failure. Mental health should be something families can discuss before there is a crisis, just as we discuss physical health, relationships, school challenges, online experiences, friendships, sexuality, substance use, and other important parts of growing up.

Sometimes the Most Important Words Are, “Tell Me More”

There is no parenting strategy, monitoring application, mental health checklist, school program, social media restriction, or perfect family relationship that can guarantee a young person will never experience a mental health crisis or suicidal thoughts. Parents and caregivers should never be left believing that if they simply watched closely enough, asked exactly the right questions, checked the right devices, or maintained a sufficiently close relationship, suicide could always have been predicted or prevented. That places an enormous and unfair burden on families and dramatically oversimplifies an extraordinarily complex human issue.

What parents and caregivers can influence is the environment surrounding their child. We can create homes where emotions can be discussed without shame, where difficult conversations are not automatically punished, where professional mental health support is normalized, where mistakes do not eliminate belonging, and where our children understand that there is very little they could tell us that would make us stop loving them.

Sometimes our teenagers will tell us exactly what is wrong. Sometimes they will provide small clues that only make sense later. Sometimes they will insist that everything is fine. Sometimes they may genuinely appear fine to everyone around them while privately experiencing something very different.

Our responsibility as parents and caregivers is not to somehow know everything happening inside our child’s mind. It’s to remain present enough to notice, curious enough to ask, safe enough to approach, strong enough to listen, and humble enough to recognize when what our child is facing requires help beyond what we as parents  or caregivers can provide.

When something doesn’t feel right, sometimes one of the most important things we can do is simply ask one more question, “Tell me more about what you’re feeling.” and then listen to what comes next.

Digital Food For Thought

The White Hatter

Facts Not Fear, Facts Not Emotions, Enlighten Not Frighten, Know Tech Not No Tech

References:

1/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/200641

2/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30014862/ 

3/ https://www.thewhitehatter.ca/post/does-technology-social-media-mental-health-issues-for-all-youth-we-need-to-reframe-the-question 

Canadian Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Resources

If you or a young person you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, self-harm, or a mental-health crisis, you do not have to navigate it alone. The following Canadian resources can provide crisis support, information, and assistance.

If you believe a young person is in immediate danger or their safety is at immediate risk, call 9-1-1 or go to the nearest emergency department

• 9-8-8: Suicide Crisis Helpline: Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year across Canada. Anyone thinking about suicide, or anyone worried about someone else, can call 988 or text 988. Support is available in English and French.  https://988.ca 

• Kids Help Phone: Young people across Canada can receive confidential support 24/7. Call 1-800-668-6868 for professional counselling or text CONNECT to 686868 to connect with a trained volunteer crisis responder. Online messaging is also available.  https://kidshelpphone.ca 

• Hope for Wellness Helpline: Available 24/7 to Indigenous people across Canada, providing culturally competent support by telephone and online chat. Call 1-855-242-3310. Services are available in English and French, with telephone support in Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut available upon request, subject to availability.  https://www.hopeforwellness.ca 

• The Trevor Project Canada / Trans Lifeline: Trans Lifeline: 1-877-330-6366 

• Government of Canada Suicide Prevention Resources: Information for parents, caregivers, educators, and others about suicide risk factors, prevention, recognizing when someone may need help, and how to support someone experiencing a crisis. The Government of Canada also emphasizes that asking someone whether they are thinking about suicide does not increase their risk and can open an important conversation.  https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/suicide-prevention.html   

• Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC): Offers resources and frameworks like the Suicide Prevention & Life Promotion in Schools: A National Guide for System Leaders. https://mentalhealthcommission.ca/ 

• Centre for Suicide Prevention (CSP): Provides research, online courses, and toolkits targeted at communities, schools, and individuals. https://www.suicideinfo.ca/ 

U.S. Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Resources

For families in the United States, these resources provide crisis support, suicide-prevention information, and guidance for parents, caregivers, and young people.

If a child, teenager, or anyone else is in immediate life-threatening danger in the United States, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 or use online chat. The Lifeline provides free and confidential support 24/7 for people experiencing suicidal crisis or emotional distress. https://988lifeline.org/ 

• National Institute of Mental Health: Suicide Prevention: Evidence-based information about suicide, prevention, treatment, research, and finding help. NIMH emphasizes that suicidal behaviour is complex and does not have a single cause. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention 

• NIMH: Warning Signs of Suicide: A useful resource for parents and caregivers explaining behaviours and emotional changes that may indicate someone is thinking about suicide.  https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/warning-signs-of-suicide

• NIMH: Child and Adolescent Mental Health: Information specifically addressing children and teenagers, including self-harm, suicidal thoughts, recognizing concerning behaviours, and finding appropriate professional help.  https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/child-and-adolescent-mental-health