Here’s yet another report on that study… I’m including it here for the following quote from one of the study’s authors…
“… we don’t have any evidence-based treatments for suicidal behavior.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/09/us-suicide-study-idUSBRE90816320130109
This study is getting a lot of press in the US (even Fox News picked it up). This link is to a PBS interview with two “experts” who mostly give political non-answers while seemingly scratching their bewildered heads.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june13/suicide_01-09.html
The study repeats old news on the high rates of suicidal thinking among young people. What’s new is that many young people are attempting suicide even though they are receiving treatment – i.e. treatment does not appear to be working very well – which seems to bewilder the experts. Especially the rather large number of young people who became suicidal AFTER commencing treatment.
Apparently the study did not look at the different kinds of treatment people may be receiving – i.e. some may work better/worse than others, but we don’t know which.
It’s also worth looking at the online comments that follow the transcript. As usual, I was aching to hear from someone with first-hand experience, and eventually there’s a couple among the comments, which was so refreshing.
I had a look at this report because I was curious what the four questions were of this suicide screening tool…
Turns out they are:
– current thoughts of being better off dead
– current wish to die
– current suicidal ideation, and
– history of suicide attempt
And that “Positive responses to 1 or more of these 4 questions identified 97% of the youth at risk for suicide”.
Am I being disingenuous thinking that this research is “discovering” the bleeding obvious – i.e. the best way to find out (the best predictor) if someone is suicidal is to… duh! … ask them!
Apparently you can get grants for this sort of research…
Cheers – David
In a previous post I introduced the key themes of my current thinking about suicide – i.e. the key themes that underpin the activism side of my work. This post is the first of a series that will explore each of these key themes in more detail.
Key Themes 1 – The Survivor Voice
The psychiatric survivor community represents a political movement calling for radical change in how we think about emotional distress. It is a diverse community with a wide-ranging agenda. What unites us is the demand that we speak for ourselves and that our voices be heard.
Other terms used to identify us are ‘consumer’ and, mainly in the UK, ‘service user’, which is often abbreviated to just ‘user’. For me, user usually means a drug user, which I used to be, but is not what’s meant here. And service user is not OK as many of us no longer use mental health services, plus we don’t want to be defined based on the services we use(d). The term consumer suffers a similar problem – just what precisely am I consuming? But more than this, for me these other terms are the language of those who oppress us, the language of the medical model of madness.
I can respect those who identify themselves using this language, many of whom are working for change from within the system. But this never worked for me. As a consumer I constantly felt patronised, put down, marginalised and/or co-opted by the hierarchy of our mental health systems. For me, adopting the survivor identity is a political statement that I refuse to participate in my own oppression.
Thinking About Suicide 