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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.
If parents leave guns in a locked safe, a teenage son cannot shoot himself if he suddenly decides life is hopeless.
People have been proudly campaigning for irresponsible gun ownership in the US for a very, very, long time. Suggesting things like locking up guns - even in the gun owner's home - will be quickly shot down by people claiming you are impeding on their constitutional right to overthrow the government.
I really, really, wish I was exaggerating or kidding on this one.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Since we've made remarkably limited advances in the treatment of patients who think that the world is worth escaping; we've decided to just start blocking the exits. On the plus side, we have some emotionally salient anecdotes, of the sort that will probably cheer you right up unless you are one of those pesky people we can't really treat!
Suicide is a symptom of mental illness. Taking away the possibility to commit suicide doesn't solve the underlying cause.
As someone who suffers from medical depression I feel pretty strongly about this subject, at least as strongly as I can allow myself to feel.
It may sound paradoxical but having the option to commit suicide was one of the things that helped me to finally seek treatment. Before I approached counseling I decided on method and location for a possible suicide. Had that option not been available to me I might not have been able to push through.
Had there been a policy in place to put people with depression on a 24/7 watch-list to prevent suicide the I would have probably gone for the suicide option first.
When the subject of suicide comes up I often see people claiming that suicide is the "easy" way out. What they don't seem to realize is that more importantly it is a way out.
Some people support assisted suicide for non-treatable painful diseases. Typically autoimmune disorders or certain forms of cancer where the body attacks itself. They have seen how much victims of those diseases have to suffer.
It is much harder to see how much you suffer when the mind attacks itself. People think that therapy cures those problems. It doesn't. Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and depression are permanent. You can only learn how to endure it or acquire the discipline to keep it back.
To me the depression is much like one would expect from alcoholism. I function, but I can not allow myself to think freely. I have to keep my mind busy in complex projects and not let it wander off. Some relatives seem to have a hard time understanding that I will never want to talk nostalgia with them, ever.
Preventing suicide kind of lacks relevance since the person my mind was before died with the depression anyway.
Taking away to option of suicide doesn't solve anything of that. It only removes the inconvenience of having to deal with a body.
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!
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