suicide

depressed person

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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.”

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1 in 12 teenagers self harm

self harmStudy finds 1 in 12 teenagers self-harm but most stop by their twenties

Despite self-harm being one of the strongest predictors of completed suicide, 90% of young people who self-harm as adolescents cease self-harming once they reach young adulthood. However, those who start self-harming as young adults will have often experienced mental health problems as adolescents, such as anxiety or depression, which should be treated.

The study by Dr Paul Moran at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, and Professor George C Patton from Centre for Adolescent Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia was published today in The Lancet and found that around 1 in 12 young people self-harm as adolescents, with the balance skewed towards girls.

“Self-harm is one of the most significant predictors of completed suicide, ” a lead author, Dr Paul Moran, of King’s College London, said.

Of the people who have died by suicide, around 50-60% have a known history of self-harm, according to Professor Keith Hawton, Director of the Centre for Suicide Research, University of Oxford.

The study found that during adolescence, self-harm was associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety, antisocial behaviour, high-risk alcohol use, cannabis use and cigarette smoking. Additionally, those who experienced depression or anxiety during adolescence were around six times more likely to self-harm in young adulthood than adolescents without depression/anxiety.

These findings are discussed further in this Lancet podcast

Source:
The Lancet Kings College London

I blog for World Mental Health Day
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…]

Break the silence for suicide survivors

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 


Source: TED