SUICIDE PREVENTION AND LOCAL RESOURCES
We just finished National Suicide Prevention Month in September. National Suicide Prevention Month is an annual monthlong campaign in the United States, designed to inform and engage health professionals and the general public about suicide prevention and the warning signs of suicide.
According to the United States Center for Disease Control, forty-nine thousand people committed suicide in the United States during calendar year 2022. In Florida, three thousand, four hundred people committed suicide in 2022. In that same year, 1,600,000 people in the United States attempted suicide. That factors out to a United States suicide rate of one person every eleven minutes. Of special note, males make up eighty percent of the suicides in the United States.
There are generally seven strategies to help prevent suicide.
- Strengthen economic support. Statistics have shown that stable housing and having financial security are strong support pillars that reduce the thoughts of suicide.
- Create protective environments. Removing access to lethal means (such as weapons or medication), helping with addiction problems, and creating a healthy family circle or culture all factor into a person’s decision to consider suicide.
- Improve access and delivery of mental health care. Individuals who have mental health counseling included in their health plan and have access to mental health providers are less likely to commit suicide.
- Promote healthy peer norms. Having friends and being engaged in the local community also reduces the threat of suicide.
- Teach coping and problemsolving skills. Easy access to education, emotional learning programs, parenting skills classes, or anything that improves family relationships, helps to reduce the risk of suicide.
- Identify and support people at risk. Receiving help from trained professionals, or even trained gatekeepers who can respond to a crisis, has been shown to lessen the urge to consider suicide.
- Lessen harms and prevent future risk. Once someone has attempted or expressed a desire to consider suicide, intervention programs should be sought out to seek immediate help. In addition, suicidal thoughts should be reported to the proper authority.
Ms. Esquire and the local YMCA recently had a program on “Understanding Mental Health and Suicide Prevention” in Fort Lauderdale. The program for that presentation contained a plethora of organizations throughout Florida that can assist in mental health and suicide prevention. For a link to that material see https://ymcasouthflorida.org/suicide-prevention.
Please note that the national suicide and crisis hotline is just simple three numbers: 988. We at Revis, Hervas & Goldberg are also here to help in any way that we can.