section_path: Prevention/Caring letters
section_name: Caring letters
paragraph_text: Caring letters
  
  The "Caring Letters" model of suicide prevention involved mailing short letters that expressed the researchers' interest in the recipients without pressuring them to take any action. The intervention reduced deaths by suicide, as proven through a randomized controlled trial. The technique involves letters sent from a researcher who had spoken at length with the recipient during a suicidal crisis. The typewritten form letters were brief – sometimes as short as two sentences – personally signed by the researcher, and expressed interest in the recipient without making any demands. They were initially sent monthly, eventually decreasing in frequency to quarterly letters; if the recipient wrote back, then an additional personal letter was mailed.
  
  Caring letters are inexpensive and either the only, or one of very few, approaches to suicide prevention that has been scientifically proven to work during the first years after a suicide attempt that resulted in hospitalization.