Youth Suicide in the Former Soviet Republics: a Comparative Analysis of Preventive Policies

This thesis, 'Youth Suicide in the Former Soviet Republics: a Comparative Analysis of Preventive Policies', studies the measurements applied both by the Russian Federation and Estonia related to avoid youth suicide. Having in mind that by the end of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and Estonia had the first and third global position related suicide both teenage and adult, respectively. However, by 2018 the rates have changed: Russia had the third global position related to youth suicide, but Estonia declined to the twenty-third. This important change in the figures suggests that there is a difference in the way in which youth suicide is assumed by the countries under study. In this way, it is relevant to know the strategies applied by the countries to understand whether, on the part of Estonia, the significant reduction is due to effective government intervention, or elements unrelated to public policy. For its part, it is relevant to study the Russian case, which although it has shown significant improvements since the 2000s, still maintains one of the largest planetary records regarding adolescent suicide. In this way, this investigation studied the main policies applied between 1990 and 2018 in both countries, and also made a comparison between the current strategies, to understand if the rates are given by the effectiveness of the policies, or by other reasons.