Over the past five years, there has been a significant increase in the volume of specific communication about the importance of suicide prevention in the construction industry. This has corresponded with an uptick in the level of communication about suicide and suicide prevention throughout society, including media coverage and entertainment programming. The construction industry has experienced one of the highest suicide rates across all industries so heightened communications about this growing public health issue has never been more important or timely.

New research suggests that heightened threat perceptions play an important role in the link between firearm ownership and suicide. The findings appear in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

“My interest in firearm suicide has been largely influenced by my experience as a military veteran,” said study author Craig J. Bryan of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

Emergency department rates for mental health conditions, substance abuse, and opioid over-dose in 2020 exceed rates over the same time period examined in 2019, according to new research published online first in JAMA Psychiatry.

Subtle but important changes are being made to a critical prevention program designed to help Sailors during the 90 days after a suicide-related behavior, the period of highest risk.

Suicide prevention is an all-hands effort, requiring a constant focus on taking care of all Sailors. That need is prompting subtle but important changes to a critical prevention program designed to help Sailors during the 90 days after a suicide-related behavior, the period of highest risk.

What do you do when you’re worried that a child might be feeling suicidal? First and foremost, it’s important that you talk to him about your concerns in a calm, non-accusatory manner. Sometimes when parents are very worried, they end up saying, “Don’t think this way,” or “You shouldn’t feel that way,” and they come across not as loving and caring, as intended, but as critical. Children respond negatively to that. So you really need to be as calm and non-accusatory as you can when talking to them.

Suicides in New Jersey likely fell in 2020, despite widespread fears that the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic would cause more people to take their own lives.

Preliminary state data recorded 636 deaths by suicide last year, down from 757 in 2018 and 723 in 2019. And while 2020′s figures are expected to rise as more suicide investigations are completed, they suggest that the strain of the past year did not translate into a rash of new suicides, as many worried it would.

February 13, 2021
Preliminary data from the state of Hawaii is showing a decrease in suicide, where numbers were higher before the pandemic began. February had the highest numbers, while the nine-month period of lock down, which began at the end of March, had fewer suicides, 124. The average number of suicide deaths in the same previous nine-month periods through 2015 to 2019 was 150. These numbers are still preliminary and are subject to change as death investigations are completed.

A new study from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found that suicide mortality can be reduced by a Federally coordinated approach employing scientifically proven options.

Columbia researchers J. John Mann, MD, Christina A. Michel, MA, and Randy P. Auerbach, PhD, conducted a systematic review, determining which suicide prevention strategies work and are scalable to national levels. The study, "Improving Suicide Prevention Through Evidence-Based Strategies: A Systematic Review," was published online in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Law enforcement and those in the military, rather than doctors and celebrities, are the most preferred messengers on firearm safety, a Rutgers study found. The findings, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, can help communicate the importance of safe firearm storage and reduce the rate of suicides, Rutgers researchers say.

If you are not familiar with this initiative it is worth a watch and perusal of the website. This is one of a few videos speaking frankly about helping a fellow veteran in distress https://overwatchproject.org/#seeing-is-believing

With Scott Neff - Associate Training Technician (Police) Supervisor in the in-service training unit at NYS DCJS and Nicholas Greco, M.S., B.C.E.T.S., C.A.T.S.M., F.A.A.E.T.S.- Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress & Diplomate and Fellow - American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress

Overview:

An understanding and overview of how prior trauma exposure influences the impact of workplace trauma on individuals; risk factors and cumulative trauma

An overview of the ACEs literature and the relevance of ACES to the law enforcement community

Observations from the field about officers who have high ACE scores

In 2019, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death for all ages in the United States. As the second leading cause of death for ages 10–34 and the fourth leading cause for ages 35–54, suicide is a major contributor to premature mortality. Recent reports have documented a steady increase in suicide rates over the past two decades (3–6). This Data Brief uses final mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System to update trends in suicide rates from 1999 through 2019 and to describe differences by sex, age group, and means of suicide.

Anthony Orr was almost done with his high school coursework when the governor of Nevada ordered a statewide shutdown of nonessential businesses on March 17, 2020.

"He was looking forward to all of the senior activities, prom and graduation," says his mother, Pamela Orr. But all he got was a "mini [graduation] ceremony," with only a handful of students walking, wearing masks and at a distance from each other.

"That was the most we could do because of COVID," she says.

In support of providers caring for Veterans both within VHA and in community settings, and caring for all at-risk patients, the Rocky Mountain MIRECC would like to introduce a newly updated Lethal Means Safety Website. We’ve re-designed the site with you in mind, focusing on four critical elements:

Evidence: separating myth from fact, and highlighting relevant and most salient research

Counseling: implementing a patient-centered counseling strategy, aligning evidence-based recommendations with patient preferences and values

Recommendations: highlighting the nuts and bolts of knowing when and how to begin a lethal means safety strategy

A significant percentage of children and youth with epilepsy (CYE) have undiagnosed depression and anxiety, according to a study presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society. These conditions may contribute to suicide among the pediatric epilepsy population.

Question: What is the association of combat exposure with suicide attempts among active-duty US service members who were deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Findings: In this cohort study of 57,841 active-duty service members, high combat severity and certain combat experiences (ie, being attacked or ambushed, seeing dead bodies or human remains, and being directly responsible for the death of a noncombatant) were associated with suicide attempts. However, these associations were mostly accounted for by mental disorders, especially posttraumatic stress disorder.

Meaning: Results of this study suggest that certain types of combat experiences may have different implications for service members than other experiences, increasing these individuals’ risk of attempting suicide, either directly or indirectly through a mental disorder.

Researchers have developed a computerized adaptive screener to identify youth at risk for attempting suicide. The screener, called the computerized adaptive screen for suicidal youth (CASSY), consists of 11 questions on average and correctly identified 82.4% of youth who went on to attempt suicide in the three months following screening. The results suggest this screener could serve as an easy-to-use way for providers to detect youth suicide risk in emergency department settings. The findings, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, appear in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

In the longest study to date on the effects of social media on teens, BYU research found a correlation between time spent on social media and suicidality risk among teenage girls.

As teens’ use of social media has grown over the past decade, so too has the suicide rate among younger people, with suicide now being the second leading cause of death among those ages 10 to 34. Many have suggested that social media is driving the increased suicide risk, but because social media is still relatively new, it’s been difficult to determine its long-term effects on mental health.

IPMI has partnered with a renowned suicide expert and trainer to provide a customized parking facility-specific, suicide prevention, response, and recovery training program.

Published: January 2021

This Advisory is based on TIP 50, Addressing Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors in Substance Abuse Treatment. It provides strategies for identifying and addressing suicidal thoughts and behaviors among individuals with SUDs

Handgun ownership, not shotgun ownership, is associated with greater odds of a person having died from self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In this Invited Commentary, the authors offer a call to action in the longstanding fight to prevent clinicians from dying by suicide. The complete article can be accessed by clicking on the PDF icon of the abstract.

Black, Hispanic and Asian troops report “significantly higher” rates of suicide attempts than their white counterparts, a new study that examined mental health disparities within the ranks has found.

Although there were no widespread differences between races and ethnicities in terms of overall behavioral health, the disparities in attempted suicide rates warrant Defense Department attention, the nonprofit research group Rand Corp. said in a recent report.

Rates of suicide among people in prison are elevated compared with people of similar age and sex who are living in the community. Improving assessments and interventions to reduce suicide risk requires updated evidence on risk factors. We aimed to examine risk factors associated with suicide in prisoners.

Background: Despite the potential benefits of parents-adolescent relationships on suicidal behaviors among adolescents, research on these topics are importantly limited by lack of comprehensiveness, difficulties in cross-country comparisons, and limited generalizability, among others. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of various aspects of parents-adolescent relationships and suicidal behaviors by sex and region, and to investigate their associations.

Background: Suicides by any method, plus ‘nonsuicide’ fatalities from drug self-intoxication (estimated from selected forensically undetermined and ‘accidental’ deaths), together represent self-injury mortality (SIM)— fatalities due to mental disorders or distress. SIM is especially important to examine given frequent undercounting of suicides amongst drug overdose deaths. We report suicide and SIM trends in the United States of America (US) during 1999-2018, portray interstate rate trends, and examine spatiotemporal (spacetime) diffusion or spread of the drug self-intoxication component of SIM, with attention to potential for differential suicide misclassification.