The Suicide Rate is Going Up. Here’s What We Can Do to Stop it. | Big Think

The Suicide Rate is Going Up. Here’s What We Can Do to Stop it.

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Big Think and the Mental Health Channel are proud to launch Big Thinkers on Mental Health, a new series dedicated to open discussion of anxiety, depression, and the many other psychological disorders that affect millions worldwide.

In the third video in the series, Dr. Christine Moutier of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention suggests several of the ways society can combat the rising suicide trend. Did you know white, middle-aged men are most at risk? What would it be like if mentally ill people got the treatment they needed before taking their lives? How would things be different if our opinions on suicidal tendencies changed overnight?

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CHRISTINE MOUTIER:

Dr. Christine Moutier knows the impact of suicide firsthand. After losing colleagues to suicide, she dedicated herself to fighting this leading cause of death. As a leader in the field of suicide prevention, Dr. Moutier joined AFSP in 2013, and has revitalized AFSP’s Education team, re-launched its Loss & Bereavement department, and expanded AFSP’s support to include those with lived experience of suicide.

She has testified before the U.S. Congress on suicide prevention, she was the host of AFSP’s latest documentary on surviving suicide loss, The Journey, and has appeared as an expert in The New York Times,The Washington Post, Time magazine, The Economist,The Atlantic, the BBC, CNN, and other print and television outlets.

Throughout her career she has focused on training healthcare leaders, physicians, and patient groups in order to change the healthcare system’s approach to mental health, fighting stigma and optimizing care for those suffering from mental health conditions. In addition to co-founding AFSP’s San Diego Chapter, Moutier co-led a successful suicide prevention and depression awareness program for health science faculty, residents, and students, which featured AFSP’s groundbreaking Interactive Screening Program.

Since earning her medical degree and training in psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, Moutier has been a practicing psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry, dean in the medical school, medical director of the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit at the VA Medical Center in La Jolla, associate director of the UCSD Outpatient Psychiatry Services Clinic, and she attended the Consultation-Liaison Service and Neuropsychiatric and Behavioral Medicine Unit at UCSD Medical Center. She also served as a co-investigator for the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression study (STAR*D), a large National Institute of Mental Health trial on the treatment of refractory depression.

Moutier has authored articles and book chapters for publications such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, Academic Medicine, the American Journal of Psychiatry, theJournal of Clinical Psychiatry, Depression and Anxiety, and Academic Psychiatry.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Christine Moutier: Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in our country and actually in the world, and yet it's largely preventable. It has been trending up in terms of our national rate of suicide over the last decade or so. It had trended down prior to that. So we're at a place now where we really want to make a difference; we want to use the methods that we know can work to lower the suicide rate and allow those who are struggling to get the help that they need.

Mental health problems play a significant role for suicide risk. In fact if you had to pick out one of the many risk factors that tend to come together to create suicide, mental health problems could be called actually a necessary, but not sufficient factor in place. In greater than 90 percent of cases of suicide, as shown in the research, there is a diagnosable mental health condition at play, whether or not it was diagnosed or treated. Now, many other factors then lay on top of that to rise up to create an imminent risk for that sense of desperation, hopelessness, but then also the thought and the planning and the ability to act on those suicidal impulses.

It is really important to note that white males in their middle age account for about 70 percent of the death toll from suicide each year. And in fact over the last decade, the rate of suicide for that part of our population went up the most, it went up almost 30 percent. You can think about things like they are just as prone to mental health problems as any other segment of society....

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