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Mental Health Experts Seek To Block the Paths To Suicide
HughPickens.com writes: Experts and laymen have long assumed that people who died by suicide will ultimately do it even if temporarily deterred. Now Celia Watson Seupel reports at the NY Times that a growing body of evidence challenges this view, with many experts calling for a reconsideration of suicide-prevention strategies to stress "means restriction." Instead of treating individual risk, means restriction entails modifying the environment by removing the means by which people usually die by suicide. The world cannot be made suicide-proof, of course. But, these researchers argue, if the walkway over a bridge is fenced off, a struggling college freshman cannot throw herself over the side. If parents leave guns in a locked safe, a teenage son cannot shoot himself if he suddenly decides life is hopeless.
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries (PDF). According to Cathy Barber, people trying to die by suicide tend to choose not the most effective method, but the one most at hand. Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent," says Barber. "With a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent. So it makes a difference what you're reaching for in these low-planned or unplanned suicide attempts." Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend's very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. "He was begging the doctors to save him," she says. But they could not.
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries (PDF). According to Cathy Barber, people trying to die by suicide tend to choose not the most effective method, but the one most at hand. Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent," says Barber. "With a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent. So it makes a difference what you're reaching for in these low-planned or unplanned suicide attempts." Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend's very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. "He was begging the doctors to save him," she says. But they could not.
it seems to me that making treatment free (it's expensive!) and encouraging people to get help rather than shaming them for feeling badly would be a better way to go.
society doesn't want spend money to help the mentally ill which ironically bites them in the ass because about 1/3 of the homeless have a form of (untreated) mental illnesses which is why they are homeless. it costs more to have social programs for the homeless than it does to actually help them or even give them homes! i'm sure it would cost much less if we had free treatment to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.
wake up, society!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If you are not in a fit state of mind when you get married, you can get an annulment. If you are not in a fit state of mind when you have the child, you can let the child be adopted or temporarily fostered. If you are not in a fit state of mind when you signed the mortgage, it can be nullified.
If you are not in a fit state of mind when you kill yourself, there is no going back.
I personally have no issues with suicide, even assisted suicide, so long as the person who has elected to kill themselves has done so in a fully concious, fit state of mind.
Nothing but more theory and anecdote.
"You can reduce the rate of suicide in the United States ... if fewer people had guns in their homes ..."
Total nonsense. The number of households with firearms has been on a multi-decade downward trend:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...
Meanwhile, the suicide rate per 100k people has been quite stable at 10-15 per 100k over the last 60 years:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/...
So where's the evidence that fewer gun-owning households means a lower suicide rate?
The ONLY consistently documented relationship between firearms and suicide is this:
"Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent ... with a gun, it's closer to 85 or 90 percent."
True and I'm sure that in their so-called "study", the 10-15% of people who survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound regret it and claim it was an impulsive act, but that's hardly "proof" that access to firearms was a causal factor in suicide attempts.
This also raises the important question of how many people really want to die and how many are just desperate for attention. The "cry for help" suicide is a well known and documented fact. If you slice your wrists perpendicular to the length of the arm, you're either incompetent or you don't really want to commit suicide. Fire a 12 gauge shotgun in your mouth and there's zero doubt that you're genuinely trying to kill yourself.
Note also that the USA is #30 worldwide in suicide rate, far behind many countries with strict gun control laws. Take Japan for example with a rate of 20.7/100k.
This is just a bunch of leftist academics trying to further the gun control agenda without real evidence. Gun control groups like Michael Bloomberg's astroturf "Everytown" are actually pushing laws requiring that all firearms in private homes be locked up ... where they will be useless for defense. And imagine police getting search warrants and breaking down your door because someone saw a gun on your nightstand? Insanity..
It is largely a cultural thing as well. If you look at a ranking of countries by suicide rate, no country in the top 10 are guns easily and legally acquired. Some, like Japan and South Korea, gun ownership is nearly impossible. But countries like the U.S. and Switzerland, having the highest gun ownership, rank 30 and 44 respectively.
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