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Stopping The Growing Risk Of Suicide: How You Can Help.

This article is more than 9 years old.

Robin Williams' sad passing from an apparent suicide is an awful reminder that depression can plague anyone, anywhere—even the world's funniest man.

It also spotlights a terrible public health problem that hasn't gotten enough attention: More than 100 Americans die from suicide every day. And it's only getting worse.

In the United States, the age-adjusted death rate from suicide grew by more than 11% between 2006 and 2011, even as the overall death rate from all causes fell almost 7%. (To put that another way, more Americans now die from suicide than from car accidents.)

The spike has been particularly concentrated among middle-aged Americans, with age-adjusted suicide rates rising by more than 30% over the past decade.

Given that suicide attempts generally increase in frequency as Americans get older, the aging Baby Boomers are especially at-risk, Rutgers sociologist Julie Phillips wrote in a draft paper she presented last year.

While suicide rates had declined in the early 2000s, Phillips noted that was appearing to reverse "as the large boomer cohort (particularly males) move into the older age ranges with traditionally higher suicide rates and with the development of increasing suicide rates among the middle-aged."

"The boomers had great expectations for what their life might look like, but I think perhaps it hasn’t panned out that way," Phillips subsequently told the New York Times. "All these conditions the boomers are facing, future cohorts are going to be facing many of these conditions as well."

Other at risk-groups include military veterans and Americans affected by the Great Recession.

But experts stress that depression and self-harm can strike even people who seem happy and outwardly successful, given suicide's multiple risk factors.

"It's often not just one thing," a Washington, D.C.-area psychologist who has treated suicidal patients told me. "It's the build-up of several things," such as a family history of abuse, substance-abuse disorders, or financial troubles.

For some gay and lesbian teenagers, the thought of self-harm may be provoked by coming to terms with their sexuality—but fearing that their families will not accept them.

How to help

Most suicides are ultimately preventable, experts say. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 90% of people who die by suicide suffer from a potentially treatable mental disorder.

What that means: A combination of awareness, support, and advocacy can help save lives, they stress.

Among the tactics that experts support:

  • Know how to recognize suicidal symptoms: A person who is acting self-destructive or talking about hurting him or herself may be issuing a "cry for help," experts say. The American Association for Suicidology has developed a mnemonic to help identify the warning signs: IS-PATH-WARM.
  • Destigmatize mental-health treatment: Friends, family, or colleagues who seek counseling or medication to deal with mental illness should be supported, experts say—not made to feel embarrassed, as can often be the case. "Unless stigma is confronted and challenged, it will continue to be a major barrier to the treatment of mental illnesses and to the prevention of suicide," the International Association of Suicide Prevention stressed last year.
  • Share resources: Between the Internet and telephone hotlines, there's always a trained professional available to talk through a crisis. For example, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255 and offers a trained, local counselor available around-the-clock. And the Trevor Project provides crisis intervention and suicide counseling for LGBT youth. The phone number is 1-866-488-7386.
  • Ensure access to care: Personal politics aside, many mental-health advocates have supported the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion because they say it would get treatment to those who need it most. "The facts are clear – six out of ten Americans living with serious mental illness have no access to mental health care at all," the National Association on Mental Illness wrote in a report last year. "Glaring gaps in treatment of this kind would not be tolerated for heart disease, cancer or diabetes and they should not be tolerated for mental illness either."

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