Connect Safely: A Summit for Saving Lives

Anne Collier wrote a commentary about the SAMHSA-sponsored summit in Washington, D.C., "Suicide and New Media: An Action Planning Summit to Save Lives," in which she quoted this takeaway from Christopher Gandin Le:

Users make the difference, Chris Le, CEO of Emotion Technology in Austin, told us. And Gallup, which has been doing research for SAMHSA, told us that "thousands of social-network-site users are active in educating and supporting fellow users to prevent suicide."

Net Family News and Connect Safely: The social Web's 'Lifeline'

Anne Collier, editor of NetFamilyNews.org and co-director, with Larry Magid, of ConnectSafely.org, interviewed Christopher Gandin Le in 2007 when he was working as Resource and Information Manager at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Parents should also know that MySpace isn't the only social site working with the Lifeline, it's just the biggest (with 160 million+ profiles now) and the first. "The reason why we have a MySpace profile was that, a year ago, we realized it was our top referrer," Le told me. At that time "it was just 10 kids linking to us, putting a banner up on their profiles. We noticed that the number of referrals they sent was higher than those sent by CDC [Centers for Disease Control], SAMSHA [the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration] or any other suicide-prevention service."