A vital program is being rolled-out across Victorian schools to reduce the rate of the highest cause of death among students.

Thousands of Victorian teachers will be taught to identify and intervene with potentially suicidal students.

Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon launched the SAFEMinds program this week, after it was developed by youth mental health group Headspace.

The first teachers to undergo suicide prevention training will come from schools in Melbourne's outer suburbs.

The assistant principal at one school, which has lost two young students to suicide in two years, said it is an area of training that needs much greater support.

“The amount of mental health issues is certainly increasing among our students ... it's very tough, it's very wide reaching,” Berwick Secondary College assistant principal Pat Mulcahy said.

“It was something I never expected to deal with in my position.

“It’s very hard for the staff, they always wonder what they could have done differently and they worry about their students and the effects on them.”

He says beyond training, school need more people to help.

“We have a welfare team, two social workers and a chaplain, nearly 1,500 students, they're working flat out all the time... they're working 10 to 12-hour days.

“We could certainly do with more people to share that load.”

With the often tragic yet private circumstances surrounding suicide, as well as laws related to the reporting thereof, many are unaware of the high toll that mental issues leading to suicide take on Australian youth.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for young people, with figures showing 143 young people took their own lives in 2012.

In Victoria, many of the suicides have been clustered in the outer suburbs, though authorities do not know why.

The $750,000 SAFEMinds program will be brought to 3,500 teachers across Victoria this year.