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American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

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Please share this video to educate your loved ones about suicide. Together we can Stop Suicide.

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"We saw real quick we were going to have to take advantage of state funding through Social Security Disability," Baker said. "He had numerous files and so it was a fight getting him on there. That allows you to take them to different facilities and have them in-house treated.

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Reference

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Teen suicide is a serious problem. But there are signs to watch for, and sources for help.

What the Research Shows

Teen suicide is a growing health concern. It is the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24, surpassed only by accidents, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to experts Michelle Moskos, Jennifer Achilles, and Doug Gray, causes of suicidal distress include psychological, environmental and social factors. Mental illness is the leading risk factor for suicide. Suicide risk factors vary with age, gender, ethnic group, family dynamics and stressful life events. According to a 2016 fact sheet distributed by the National Institute of Mental Health, research shows that risk factors for suicide include depression and other mental disorders, and substance-abuse disorders (often in combination with other mental disorders). More than 90 percent of people who die by suicide have these risk factors. The risk for suicide frequently occurs in combination with external circumstances that seem to overwhelm at-risk teens who are unable to cope with the challenges of adolescence because of predisposing vulnerabilities such as mental disorders. Examples of stressors are disciplinary problems, interpersonal losses, family violence, sexual orientation confusion, physical and sexual abuse and being the victim of bullying.

National suicide prevention efforts have focused on school education programs, crisis center hotlines, media guidelines (suicide prevention strategies that involve educating media professionals about the prevalence of copycat suicides among adolescents, in an effort to minimize the impact of news stories reporting suicide) and efforts to limit firearm access.

Referrals can be made for treatment, and treatment can be effective when signs are observed in time. Intervention efforts for at-risk youth can put them in contact with mental health services that can save their lives.

Suicide is a relatively rare event and it is difficult to accurately predict which persons with these risk factors will ultimately commit suicide. However, there are some possible warning signs such as:

Talking about dying: Any mention of dying, disappearing, jumping, shooting oneself or other types of self harm.

Recent loss: Through death, divorce, separation, broken relationship, self-confidence, self-esteem, loss of interest in friends, hobbies or activities previously enjoyed.

Change in personality: Sad, withdrawn, irritable, anxious, tired, indecisive, apathetic.

Change in behavior: Can't concentrate on school, work or routine tasks.

Change in sleep patterns: Insomnia, often with early waking or oversleeping, or nightmares.

Change in eating habits: Loss of appetite and weight, or overeating.

Fear of losing control: Acting erratically, harming self or others.

Low self esteem: Feeling worthless, shame, overwhelming guilt, self-hatred, "everyone would be better off without me."

No hope for the future: Believing things will never get better, or that nothing will ever change.

What the Research Means

One in five teenagers in the U.S. seriously considers suicide annually, according to data collected by the CDC. In 2003, 8 percent of adolescents attempted suicide, representing approximately 1 million teenagers, of whom nearly 300,000 receive medical attention for their attempt; and approximately 1,700 teenagers died by suicide each year. Currently, the most effective suicide prevention programs equip mental health professionals and other community educators and leaders with sufficient resources to recognize who is at risk and who has access to mental health care.

How We Use the Research

Stop a Suicide Today is a school-based suicide prevention program that has experienced success with a documented reduction in self-reported suicide attempts. Developed by Harvard psychiatrist Douglas Jacobs, MD, Stop a Suicide Today teaches people how to recognize the signs of suicide in family members, friends and co-workers, and empowers people to make a difference in the lives of their loved ones. It emphasizes the relationship between suicide and mental illness and the notion that a key step in reducing suicide is to get those in need into mental health treatment.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK or visit their website.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline's mission is to provide immediate assistance to individuals in suicidal crisis by connecting them to the nearest available suicide prevention and mental health service provider through a toll-free telephone number: 1-800-273-TALK (8255). It is the only national suicide prevention and intervention telephone resource funded by the Federal Government.

Cited Research

Berman, A., Jobes, D., & Silverman, M., (2006) Adolescent suicide: Assessment and intervention (2nd ed.) Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 456 pp.

Gould, M., Greenberg, T., Velting, D., Shaffer, D. (2003). Youth suicide risk and preventive interventions: A review of the past 10 years. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 42(4):386-405.

Achilles, J., Gray, D., Moskos, M. (2004). Adolescent Suicide Myths in the United States. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. 25(4):176-182.

Beautrais, A. (2005). National strategies for the reduction and prevention of suicide. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention.26(1);1-3

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Teen suicide is a serious problem. But there are signs to watch for, and sources for help. Teen suicide is a growing health concern. It is the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24, surpassed only by accidents, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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There is a lack of financial support with preventing suicide. 

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There is a lack of financial support with preventing suicide. 

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"Community Mental Health Centers are mandated to see and treat persons who have no pay source, but they have not had many, if any, increases in what they receive in funding to do that for quite some time," Arnold said. "Yet they have endured cuts in funds and increases in those who fall into that category."

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Veteran's fight for us, yet we fail them!

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Veteran's fight for us, yet we fail them!

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This quote and picture shows how many Veterans suffer from depression and suicide. "Notably, veterans comprised 14 percent of the total number of suicides completed by adults in 2016 despite making up only 8 percent of the total adult population."

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Not enough is being done to prevent suicide/mental illness!

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Not enough is being done to prevent suicide/mental illness!

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This picuture and study shows how many people that are mentally ill do not get the right treatment and instead end up in jail. "A report by the Bazelon Center [for Mental Health Law] released in June [2009] found 14.5% of men and 31% of women in the jails they studied had serious mental illnesses. It's a large number. In 2007, 13 million Americans spent time in jail."

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We can take do something about it right now!

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We can take do something about it right now!

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Don't hurt others, be a listener, be positive, and speak out! This video gives us information on how we can help prevent suicide.

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Rise in Suicide yet funding is cut. This video shows examples of people who need mental health services. It also shows how funding is being cut even though there is a big need for mental health services.

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Rise in Suicide yet funding is cut. This video shows examples of people who need mental health services. It also shows how funding is being cut even though there is a big need for mental health services.

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This image and quote shows how suicide is a growing problem in America that affects all types of people"According to a 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide rates have been consistently rising across the United States since 1999, with an increase of nearly 30 percent occurring between 1999 and 2016."

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This article shows how people believe that mental illness and suicide can be linked to how much time we spend in front of a screen.

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Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens.

In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless - classic symptoms of depression - surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13-to-18-year-olds who committed suicide jumped 31 percent.

In a new paper published in Clinical Psychological Science, my colleagues and I found that the increases in depression, suicide attempts and suicide appeared among teens from every background: more privileged and less privileged, across all races and ethnicities, and in every region of the country. All told, our analysis found that the generation of teens I call " iGen" - those born after 1995 - is much more likely to experience mental-health issues than their millennial predecessors.

What happened so that so many more teens, in such a short time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit suicide? After scouring several large surveys for clues, I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens' lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone.

All signs point to the screen

Because the years between 2010 and 2015 were a period of steady economic growth and falling unemployment, it's unlikely that economic malaise was a factor. Income inequality was (and still is) an issue, but it didn't suddenly appear in the early 2010s: This gap between the rich and poor had been widening for decades. We found that the time teens spent on homework barely budged between 2010 and 2015, effectively ruling out academic pressure as a cause.

However, according to the Pew Research Center, smartphone ownership crossed the 50 percent threshold in late 2012 - right when teen depression and suicide began to increase. By 2015, 73 percent of teens had access to a smartphone.

Not only did smartphone use and depression increase in tandem, but time spent online also was linked to mental-health issues across two different data sets. We found that teens who spent five or more hours a day online were 71 percent more likely than those who spent only one hour a day to have at least one suicide risk factor (depression, thinking about suicide, making a suicide plan or attempting suicide). Overall, suicide risk factors rose significantly after two or more hours a day of time online.

Of course, it's possible that instead of time online causing depression, depression causes more time online. But three other studies show that is unlikely (at least when viewed through social media use).

Two studies followed people over time, with both studies finding that spending more time on social media led to unhappiness, while unhappiness did not lead to more social media use. A third study randomly assigned participants to give up Facebook for a week vs. continuing their usual use. Those who avoided Facebook reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week.

The argument that depression might cause people to spend more time online also doesn't explain why depression increased so suddenly after 2012. Under that scenario, more teens became depressed for an unknown reason and then started buying smartphones, which doesn't seem too logical.

What's lost when we're plugged in

Even if online time doesn't directly harm mental health, it could still adversely affect it in indirect ways, especially if time online crowds out time for other activities.

For example, while conducting research for my book on iGen, I found that teens now spend much less time interacting with their friends in person. Interacting with people face to face is one of the deepest wellsprings of human happiness; without it, our moods start to suffer and depression often follows. Feeling socially isolated is also one of the major risk factors for suicide. We found that teens who spent more time than average online and less time than average with friends in person were the most likely to be depressed. Since 2012, that's what has occurred en masse: Teens have spent less time on activities known to benefit mental health (in-person social interaction) and more time on activities that may harm it (time online).

Teens are also sleeping less, and teens who spend more time on their phones are more likely than others to not be getting enough sleep. Not sleeping enough is a major risk factor for depression, so if smartphones are causing less sleep, that alone could explain why depression and suicide increased so suddenly.

Depression and suicide have many causes: Genetic predisposition, family environments, bullying and trauma can all play a role. Some teens would experience mental-health problems no matter what era they lived in.

But some vulnerable teens who would otherwise not have had mental-health issues may have slipped into depression because of too much screen time, not enough face-to-face social interaction, inadequate sleep or a combination of all three.

It might be argued that it's too soon to recommend less screen time, given that the research isn't completely definitive. However, the downside to limiting screen time - say, to two hours a day or less - is minimal. In contrast, the downside to doing nothing - given the possible consequences of depression and suicide - seems, to me, quite high.

It's not too early to think about limiting screen time; let's hope it's not too late.

Twenge is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. This article was originally published on theconversation.com.

Read more

Blue light from electronics disturbs sleep, especially for teenagers

More than a third of teenage girls experience depression

Growing up in the screen age

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Perspective | Teenage depression and suicide are way up - and so is smartphone use

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Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens. In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless - classic symptoms of depression - surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent.

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Suicide: Second Leading Cause of death 10-30:(

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Suicide: Second Leading Cause of death 10-30:(

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This picture and this quote hows how suicide is a major problem with the children and adults."While suicide is the second-leading cause of death among young people aged ten to thirty-four, middle-aged people ages 45 to 54 die by suicide at the highest rate (almost twenty people per 100,000). In the United States, more than half of all 2016 suicides were completed using firearms."

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the reference about suicide was disturbing how people think there not important i this world.

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The CDC and other public agencies stress that increasing awareness, destigmatizing mental health issues, and making suicide prevention and treatment programs more widely available are crucial to addressing increased suicide rates. Creating a cost-effective, accessible framework that follows this model has continued to pose many practical challenges, however.

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Reference

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"We saw real quick we were going to have to take advantage of state funding through Social Security Disability," Baker said. "He had numerous files and so it was a fight getting him on there. That allows you to take them to different facilities and have them in-house treated.

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In the article, "Mental Illness is Prevalent in America" it states that the "The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that one in five people will be diagnosed with a mental disorder at some time in his or her life, and that 5% to 9% of the population will develop a serious mental condition".