The key to preventing more suicide attempts might start at a helpful if not obvious place: the emergency room.
The National Institute of Mental Health found that hospital emergency departments could decrease the number of further adult suicide attempts as much as 30 percent, according to a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry.
Researchers conducted the study of approximately 1,400 patients in eight hospital emergency rooms across seven states, all of whom had attempted suicide or had thoughts of suicide. Between a combination of emergency department screening, resources given to patients when they were discharged and the occasional phone check-in by hospital personnel, researchers found the plan of action resulted in a 30 percent reduction of new suicide attempts over 52 weeks compared to people who received standard ER care.
“We would like to have had an even stronger effect, but the fact that we were able to impact attempts with this population and with a relatively limited intervention is encouraging,” study author Ivan Miller, a professor at Brown University, said in a statement. The study was collaborative, combining experts from the likes of Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Brown University and Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I.
Study limitations included that it wasn’t a randomized clinical trial, given its method of intervention, and that in doing so “it is possible that time or other nonstudy systemic changes may have produced differences in participant samples or other unknown factors…,” according to the study.
And going forward, “much larger trials will be necessary to adequately study the effect of interventions on suicide deaths,” also according to the study.
Conversations surrounding suicide have increasingly become part of broader mental health discussions, seemingly buoyed by recent pop culture phenomena like the popular Netflix series “13 Reasons Why,” a show that follows the aftermath of a student’s suicide and the circumstances surrounding it revealed through a series of cassette tapes.
Despite positive reviews, people have blasted the series for glorifying suicide and possibly creating an uptick in copycat events. Netflix has since updated trigger warnings since the series premiered in late March, BuzzFeed reports.
“Moving forward, we will add an additional viewer warning card before the first episode as an extra precaution for those about to start the series and have also strengthened the messaging and resource language in the existing cards for episodes that contain graphic subject matter, including the URL 13ReasonsWhy.info — a global resource center that provides information about professional organizations that support help around the serious matters addressed in the show,” Netflix said in a statement.
Suicide is the United States’ tenth leading cause of death, according to the study. Death by suicide accounted for more than 44,000 deaths in 2015.
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