Education, Outreach, and Firearm Restrictions Offer Effective and Scalable Suicide Prevention

Educating primary care physicians on depression management, increasing awareness about mental illness and suicide among high school students, and reaching out to previously hospitalized psychiatric patients after discharge represent several of the most effective and scalable approaches to suicide prevention, according to areview inAJP in Advance.J. John Mann, M.D., and colleagues at Columbia University reviewed 97 clinical trials and 30 population-level studies published between 2005 and 2019 that explored interventions aimed at reducing suicides or suicidal behavior such as self-harm. “We focused on suicidal behavior as an outcome and not suicidal ideation, because there is a closer relationship between nonfatal suicide attempts and suicide deaths than there is between suicidal ideation and suicide deaths,” they wrote.The authors focused on a variety of suicide prevention strategies, including education campaigns, screening tools, medication, psychotherapy, follow-up contact with people who had attempted suicide, and restricting access to firearms. The authors evaluated each strategy on the following two criteria: evidence that the method prevented suicide attempts and the reliability with which it could be scaled up to city, county, state, and/or national levels.Most studies found the interventions examined were superior to control at preventing suicide attempts. Among interventions that could be easily scaled up, four showed strong evidence of effect:Educating youth ab...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: ajp in advance firearm restrictions outreach primary care physicians recently discharged scalability suicide prevention Source Type: research