The latest data reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that the rate of U.S. suicide has been increasing since 2000, with 2009 marking the highest number of suicides in 15 years.
The CDC report showed that between 2008 and 2009, the suicide rate increased 2.4 percent, with 36,909 suicide deaths reported nationally. In August 2011, a report from the CDC showed that in 2008, 13.4 percent of people who committed suicide had experienced job and financial problems. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, an emergency crisis hotline reported a 14 percent increase in call volume between 2010 and 2011. The CDC’s thus recommended increasing counseling, job placement and financial services that can help reduce the mental distress that can increase suicide risk.
“The recent increase in suicide, whether heightened by economic strain or other social triggers, signifies the need for education and training on understanding and preventing suicide,” said Dr. Lisa Firestone, Director of Research and Education at The Glendon Association and Violence and Suicide Prevention Alliance. “The suicidal state is both preventable and treatable. Services and education have been proven to save lives. Armed with the right tools to identify the warning signs and implement helper tasks, we can fight this crisis.”
A recent study by the University of Otago, Wellington into internet pro-suicide and support sites indicates that significant improvements need to be made in this area to help prevent suicidal behaviour.
The study led by Professor Sunny Collings from the Social Psychiatry and Population Mental Health Unit investigated the quality and content of websites related to suicide both in New Zealand and internationally.
“At this stage the impact of the internet in relation to suicide isn’t well understood,” says Professor Collings, “so this research increases our understanding of this area, and points the way to improvements in support sites to assist in the prevention of suicidal behaviour.”
The study investigated websites using Google, Yahoo and MSN and added NZ search engines AltaVista, GoogleNZ and SearchNZ. A total of 2160 search results from 718 distinct sites were analyzed in terms of their content and placement.
Among the 2160 hits, 72 distinct sites appeared as the top result in at least one search. The most common were pro-suicide or suicide permissive sites (33%), while support sites for those wanting information were the second most common at 18%.
Four pro-suicide sites featured amongst the ten most retrieved Google results, but only one support site featuring in Google’s top 10. None of the top 10 sites from Google were NZ based.
“One of the big problems with the internet is that pro-suicide sites are often the first thing people see when they search about methods,” says Professor Collings. “In contrast support sites were only 9.3% of total hits, but never featured as the number one search result.” [continue reading…]
Even when our lives appear fine from the outside, locked within can be a world of quiet suffering, leading some to the decision to end their life. At TEDYou, JD Schramm asks us to break the silence surrounding suicide and suicide attempts, and to create much-needed resources to help people who reclaim their life after escaping death. Resources: http://t.co/wsNrY9C
Although thousands of people commit suicide worldwide each year, researchers and doctors do not have any method for evaluating a person’s likelihood of thinking about or trying to commit suicide. An international group of scientists, in which the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (IMIM) has participated, has devised the first risk index in order to prevent suicides.
“It is of key importance to identify suicidal thoughts among people at increased risk. The most important contribution that our study has made is an international risk index to estimate the likelihood of a person moving on from these thoughts to any one of the following behaviours – planning or trying to commit suicide”, Jordi Alonso, head of the IMIM Healthcare Services Research Group, tells SINC.
The data used in the study, which also involved Josep M. Haro, a researcher at the Sant Joan de Déu Healthcare Park, and which has been published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, come from the World Health Organisation (WHO) survey World Mental Health Surveys between 2001 and 2007, in which 108,705 adults from 21 countries responded to the Composite International Diagnostic Interview.
The study looks at suicidal behaviour rather than suicides that result in death, since it is based on interviews carried out with adults. The factors associated with such behaviour are – being female, younger age groups, lower levels of education, not living with a partner, being unemployed, suffering from certain mental illnesses, having experienced troubles during childhood, and mental illnesses [continue reading…]
