September Digest: National Suicide Prevention Week Edition

Health Professional Digest Volume 1, Issue 19

The HHS Office on Women’s Health (OWH) knows how important it is for you to have the latest information on prevention and treatment to help you best serve your patients. Each month, we will share a curated list of tools and resources that you can immediately put into practice.

National Suicide Prevention Week — News You Can Use

According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the rate of people dying by suicide in the United States rose by nearly 30% during 1999–2016. Further, suicide rates increased significantly in 44 states, with 25 states experiencing increases greater than 30% and 43 states experiencing significant increases among females specifically. Suicide rates for females are highest among those ages 45–64, though the rates of girls and women across all age segments taking their own lives were higher in 2016 than in 2000, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Health professionals have an opportunity to identify at-risk patients, given one study’s findings that nearly 64% of insured individuals who made a suicide attempt had made some type of health care visit within the four weeks prior to that suicide attempt. The most common types of visits occurred in outpatient specialty and primary care settings without mental health diagnoses, highlighting the need for non-mental health clinicians to have adequate training in suicide assessment, prevention, or treatment. This National Suicide Prevention Week (Sept. 9–15), use a comprehensive evidence-based public health approach to help prevent suicide risk before it occurs, identify and support persons at risk, prevent reattempts, and help friends and family members in the aftermath of a suicide.