ORIGINAL ARTICLE Youth and Young Adult Suicide in Bhutan: a Stress and Resilience Approach Susan V. Lester 1 & Michaela M. Sacra 2 & Judith C. Durham 1 & Damber K. Nirola 3 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Youth and young adults are responsible for 69% of completed suicides in Bhutan. As a developing nation committed to Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a measure of national success, Bhutan has recently recognized the growing prevalence of suicide and is taking steps toward responding to suicide and prevention. One approach to suicide prevention is building resilience. Bhutan has many resources for supporting resilience, including counselors. Counseling is a growing profession in Bhutan, and counselors can use specific strategies to support resilience in youth and young adults in school, college, and community settings. Keywords Bhutan . Suicide . Youth and young adults . International counseling . Resilience United States Introduction Bhutan is a small South Asian constitutional monarchy of just over 800,000 people and is known for measuring national success in terms of gross national happiness (GNH) rather than the Western construct of gross domestic product (GDP). GNH encompasses socioeconomic development, environmental conservation, promotion of Bhutanese culture, and good governance. Individual happiness is only a small consideration, in contrast to the popular Western expectation of the https://doi.org/10.1007/s10447-020-09397-8 * Susan V. Lester slester@usj.edu 1 Department of Counseling and Applied Behavioral Studies, University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, CT, United States 2 Department of Counseling and School Psychology, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, WI, United States 3 Damber K. Nirola, Department of Psychiatry, Jigme Dorji Wangchuk National Referral Hospital, Thimphu, Bhutan International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling (2020) 42:132–146 Published online: 27 March 2020