The scourge of suicidal behavior touches many lives and knows few boundaries. About 30,000 people are known to take their own lives in the United States each year. In addition, many of those deaths recorded as accidental or undetermined by coroners and medical examiners may have been motivated by suicidal intent. Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in this country and, among young people 15 to 19 years of age, suicide is exceeded in frequency as a cause of death only by accidental deaths
