Suicide rates remain the same despite huge increases in funding and education

[jay gw]

Despite a substantial increase in treatment for suicide attempts, no significant decrease occurred in the number of persons reporting suicide-related behaviors in the U.S. in the 1990s, according to a study in the May 25 issue of JAMA.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, according to background information in the article. As a result, the World Health Organization and the U.S. surgeon general have highlighted the need for more comprehensive data on the occurrence of suicidal thoughts and attempts, with the assumption that such data would be useful for planning national health care policy, as well as for evaluating efforts to reduce suicide and suicide-related behaviors.

Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and colleagues examined nationally representative general-population trend data on the 12-month prevalence and treatment of suicide-related behaviors. Data came from the 1990-1992 National Comorbidity Survey and the 2001-2003 National Comorbidity Survey Replication. These surveys asked identical questions to 9,708 people aged 18 to 54 years about the past year's occurrence of suicidal ideation, plans, gestures, attempts, and treatment. Face-to-face interviews were administered in the homes of respondents.

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/293/20/2487

Strange. The resources available today are vastly different from 10 or more years ago, the topic is covered all the time in the media and no improvements at all.

[Beanbag]

Why should it be so mysterious that more people want to kill themselves these days? I grew up in the 60's expecting to either be destroyed in a nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States, or would be drafted and sent off to Vietnam and end up fertilizing fome rice paddy. Or we would all be damaged and mutated from the insecticides, air pollution, and chemical wastes being produced.

Now, we have companies like Enron that wipe out people's savings, a bunch of middle east zealots trying to convert the rest of the world to their way of thinking, or nuke them into nonexistance; religious fundies gaining ground in the United States; Presidents who outright lie and weasel out in public. AIDS. Ebola. Declining oil. Global warming. The ozone hole. Offshoring of jobs.

All we tend to hear these days is how bad things are, and how worse they are going to get. Why bother to stay around?

Beanbag

[Soapy Sam]

Perhaps the percentage of people with a deathwish is defined by some invariant factor. As poulation increases, we would expect more, not less. Maybe the programmes really are successful.

[Dancing David]

Interesting, the study reports on the prevalence of suicidal ideation and peri-sucidal behaviors in the general population.

So this begs two questions that the study does not ask:

1. Are people experiencing suicidal ideation more likely to seek out intervention than in the past?

2. Does suidice interevention have an effect?

The study would seem to indicate that education about suicide does not reduce the occurance of suicidal ideation in a random population of 10,000 people, which is like asking if nutritional education prevents diabetes.

As someone who does interventions with an at risk population I think that the question should be, are pople more likely to seek intervention?

What barriers exist to people seeking intervention?