The Ministry of Education (MOE) established the ‘Three-level Prevention Program for Students Self-harm on Campus’ to prevent student suicide incidents occurring on campuses, and to supervise schools at all levels to carry out this three-level preventive measure.

         The three-level preventive measure includes:

• First-level prevention: Enhance students’ mental health through courses to protect students from self-harm.

• Second-level prevention: Early detection of high-risk suicide students and intervening counseling.

• Third-level prevention: Establish a crisis management system after the occurrence of suicide incidents to prevent any further suicide incidents, to combine community resources to provide multiple counseling channels, and to construct a counseling resource network.

  The ‘Three-level Prevention Program for Students Self-harm on Campus’ promotes suicide prevention to university and college students, supervises schools at all levels to carry out this three-level preventive measure, and is expected to effectively reduce the occurrence of suicide among students. Six dimensions are included in this program: research and development, organization operation enhancement, professional cultivation and training for suicide prevention, courses promotion, promotion and implementation of the prevention program, and social publicity and education for self-harm prevention.

   

  The six dimensions are summarized as follows:

• Research and development: Regular analysis of student suicide cases is conducted to explore and discuss the possible factors of suicidal behavior on campus as a reference for preventive measures.

• Organization operation enhancement, promotion and implementation of prevention program: All educational authorities supervise the establishment of student suicide prevention teams in their schools to promote the three-level preventive measure, to strengthen the school counseling system, and to implement student counseling.

• Professional cultivation and training for suicide prevention: Enhance the teachers’ and counselors’ competence in suicide prevention.

• Courses promotion: Encourage schools to strengthen students' mental health and enhance frustration tolerance through courses.

• Social publicity and education: Combine the resources of private sector organizations to carry out life education and self-harm related activities for school personnel or parents.

   

  The MOE will continue to integrate the student suicide prevention resources network in accordance with the ‘Three-level Prevention Program for Students Self-harm on Campus’ and supervise schools at all levels to implement this three-level preventive measure. Schools at all levels implement this program through the measures of enhancing a better awareness for school personnel of recognizing potential student suicide signs, augmenting competence for school personnel to deal with campus crisis events, comprehensively bettering counseling systems in schools at all levels, and enhancing students’ self-protective factor by undertaking courses. With this implementation, students’ mental health will be enhanced, protection systems on campuses will be promoted, and the combination of community resources will be strengthened, thus effectively decreasing the suicide rate of campus students and reducing the occurrence of incidents.