SAM app helps counselors, parents detect language of teen suicide

Dr. John Pestian, professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, and biomedical informatics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center within the University of Cincinnati, and his team have created an app that examines language of suicidal teens. They call it SAM (Spreading Activation Mobile). Any parent of a teen knows all too well the ups and downs of those tumultuous years. At best, parents feel utterly infuriated. At worst, completely helpless and shaken to the core -- especially if kids harm, or threaten to kill, themselves.