This is a guest post from Gabriela D. Acosta, the community manager for the University of Southern California’s MSW programs. Around the world, suicide is a major public health problem and is the leading cause of death for young people. Every 40 seconds the world loses someone to suicide. Worldwide, nearly 1 million people succumb to suicide each year, a number that exceeds deaths from war and homicide combined. The first step to comprehensive prevention is two-fold: education and early-intervention work.