Re: The lost, beautiful mind of Ivan Car, Aug. 21.

A letter to the editor published in yesterday's edition of the Ottawa Citizen:

After reading this article, I wish first to offer thanks to Anouk MontpetitCar for sharing her story about her husband Ivan Car's [pictured] struggles with depression - a battle he fought bravely but sadly lost.

Car's story is more common than one might think - and so often, these kinds of stories go untold and unnoticed. By sharing her husband's story with Citizen readers, MontpetitCar has not only provided a glimpse into what is a severe, chronic and disabling illness, but also the frustrations that someone with mental illness faces in seeking appropriate treatment as quickly as possible.

As with any other severe, chronic and disabling illness, quick response, expertise and ongoing care are all necessary if one is to recover. Unfortunately, it appears that by the time Car decided to seek the services offered at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, it was too late; he was too tired to face what lay ahead.

Perhaps he would have received the proper care and treatment if the waiting lists for psychiatric treatment at mental health facilities weren't so very long and if the Ministry of Health hadn't decided over 10 years ago that psychiatric emergency services should only be provided at local hospitals that have certain emergency-room capabilities. (An exception was made for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, which still operates emergency services at the Clarke Institute on College Street.)

Because of this government decision, the Royal - which has obvious expertise in mental health - was forced to close its emergency services department in 2000. Former patients of the Royal speak fondly of the empathetic, caring environment and expert care received at the emergency room prior to this forced closure.

I and many other families I know have experienced the extreme difficulties of sitting for hours in a hospital emergency waiting room with a severely ill loved one who is in immediate need of psychiatric services. Often, very sick people never receive psychiatric services because, due to their illness, they are unable to wait and are unlikely to return, no matter how severe the symptoms.

There are real practical benefits to receiving emergency service at a mental health centre as opposed to an emergency room geared to treating fevers and broken bones. When someone is suffering from mental illness, it is imperative that appropriate mental health care begin at the first encounter between the health provider and the client. It can make the difference between success and failure.

Given the recent discussions about "client-centred" care, it is incumbent that two things happen - that the wait list for psychiatric services be addressed and that emergency services be returned to the Royal where specialized, therapeutic care goes beyond dispensing of medication.

Cynthia Clark, Ottawa Chair, Family Advisory Council, ROMHC

Image credit

Vancouver Coastal Review Sidesteps the Main Issue

An August 24th media release from the North Shore Schizophrenia Society:

Vancouver Coastal, in a review of the death by suicide of Marek Kwapiszewski, has ducked the leading question they needed to answer: Why is “dangerousness” still considered a requirement for involuntary admission rather than “to prevent the person’s... substantial mental or physical deterioration,” as spelled out in the Mental Health Act?

What was promised by CEO David Ostrow [pictured] to have been an “independent” review, moreover, turned out to be not so independent after all, with senior managers under question in the review taking part in drawing up its recommendations.

Kwapiszewski, 54, of Vancouver, who suffered from schizophrenia, jumped off the Granville Street Bridge to his death June 29, 2008. His sister, Halina Haboosheh, together with her lawyer, had made 16 different attempts to get him the treatment he needed – treatment which required involuntary admission since Kwapiszewski, like many suffering from schizophrenia, did not have insight into his own condition.

Instead of dealing with the factors leading to Kwapiszewski’s death, the review came up with three brief items in a so-called action plan, which involved no changes or improvements in practice, nor was any fault determined although it was an obvious case of clinical failure.

“The ‘action plan’ should have been called an ‘inaction plan,’” NSSS president Herschel Hardin commented. “It was as if a review had not taken place.”

The so-called action plan was presented to Haboosheh and the North Shore Schizophrenia Society, which made the original submission in the case, at a meeting July 26, in Vancouver Coastal’s boardroom.

The first item, to facilitate a discussion to consider development of an operating definition of “deterioration,” makes no commitment to ultimately do anything, and is highly questionable to begin with in any case. Nor does it apply to the Kwapiszewski case, where the deterioration was quite clear and substantial.

The second and third of the three items were bureaucratic filler, not representing anything new and showing no grasp of what the problem was.

The review also completely missed two other crucial factors in the case: the failure of Vancouver Coastal staff to involve the sister, Halina Haboosheh, as an integral member of the treatment team, following best practices, and the concomitant failure to share clinical information with her. If that had been done, Marek Kwapiszewski might well be alive today.

It was also learned that the items were not the independent work of the external lawyer and psychiatric consultant hired to undertake the review, but were a consensus arrived at with senior community mental health managers and, possibly, Vancouver Coastal’s risk management officer. In effect, they had a veto over what would be presented.

As well as forfeiting the review’s independence, this meant that a major shake-up of senior mental health management, called for in NSSS’s 2009 submission, could not even be addressed. Instead, the primary subjects of the review, as NSSS considered them, were parties to the review’s outcome.

In response to Vancouver Coastal’s items, NSSS has presented four recommendations of its own to Vancouver Coastal and has asked Ostrow and his Board for leave to speak directly to the recommendations at a Board meeting.

Attached [please click here and here] are the NSSS recommendations and the Vancouver Coastal items. The NSSS submission on the case, June 26, 2009, is available on our website at www.northshoreschizophrenia.org/marek.pdf. A brief background analysis of the Vancouver Coastal items, such as they are, is also available on the NSSS website.

Media Contact

Herschel Hardin
North Shore Schizophrenia Society President
604-922-7153
herschel@northshoreschizophrenia.org

Photo credit

Serum S100B: A Potential Biomarker for Suicidality in Adolescents?

Structure of the S100B protein. Based on PyMOL rendering of PDB 1b4c.

The abstract of a paper published online by PLoS One:

By Tatiana Falcone, Vincent Fazio, Catherine Lee, Barry Simon, Kathleen Franco, Nicola Marchi, and Damir Janigro*

Cleveland Clinic-Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America

Abstract

Studies have shown that patients suffering from depression or schizophrenia often have immunological alterations that can be detected in the blood. Others reported a possible link between inflammation, a microgliosis and the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in suicidal patients. Serum S100B is a marker of BBB function commonly used to study cerebrovascular wall function.

Methods

We measured levels of S100B in serum of 40 adolescents with acute psychosis, 24 adolescents with mood disorders and 20 healthy controls. Patients were diagnosed according to DSM-IV TR criteria. We evaluated suicidal ideation using the suicidality subscale of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale for Children (BPRS-C).

Results

Serum S100B levels were significantly higher (p<0.05) and correlated to severity of suicidal ideation in patients with psychosis or mood disorders, independent of psychiatric diagnosis. Patients with a BPRS-C suicidality subscores of 1–4 (low suicidality) had mean serum S100B values +/− SEM of 0.152+/−0.020 ng/mL (n = 34) compared to those with BPRS-C suicidality subscores of 5–7 (high suicidality) with a mean of 0.354+/−0.044 ng/mL (n = 30). This difference was statistically significant (p<0.05).

Conclusion

Our data support the use of S100B as an adjunctive biomarker to assess suicidal risk in patients with mood disorders or schizophrenia.


Citation: Falcone T, Fazio V, Lee C, Simon B, Franco K, et al. (2010) Serum S100B: A Potential Biomarker for Suicidality in Adolescents? PLoS ONE 5(6): e11089. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011089

Copyright: © 2010 Falcone et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

*E-mail: janigrd@ccf.org

To download the entire paper, please click here (PDF).

Also see:

Serum Biomarker May Help Predict Suicidality in Adolescents

Identifying Suicide Risks in Adolescents


Image courtesy of Emw. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Address the real barriers

A letter to the editor published in today's edition of The Globe and Mail:

Untreated mental illness is a major risk for suicide: The rate of suicide for people with schizophrenia is 50 times higher than the general population, and 15 to 30 times higher for people with bipolar disorder (Suicide Barriers Fail To Address Root Of Problem – July 7). Suicide is the leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds.

In Canada, only three in 10 adults access mental health care; the situation is worse for children and youth. While stigma may be a factor, the biggest problem is the lack of accessible mental health services and a lack of focus on early intervention. It is ironic that the share of health spending on mental health continues to decline, even though we know recessions lead to increased demands for mental-health services.

Provincial governments have an opportunity to use the increase in federal health transfers between now and 2014 to reverse this trend and focus on early intervention.

Steve Lurie [pictured], executive director, CMHA Toronto Branch

Also see:

Effect of a barrier at Bloor Street Viaduct on suicide rates in Toronto: natural experiment

Suicide barrier on Bloor Viaduct worked, but jumpers went elsewhere: study


Photo credit

The media must stop ignoring suicide

An article published in today's edition of The Windsor Star:

By Mark Henick, Special to The Windsor Star

On the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 25, a well-known former Fredericton city councilor walked into the Emergency Room with a lot on his mind. It is not known if he told them he was going to take his own life. Whatever happened in the ER, one thing was certain: He did not get rushed past the queue for immediate psychiatric care.

Instead, he ended up leaving, just walking right out the door. He called the police from in front of the hospital and, with phone in one hand and 16-gauge shotgun in the other, told them that he intended to kill himself.

To read the entire article, please click here.

Also see:

He was always looking for the good in people

Province Releases Report on Suicide, Attempted Suicide

A July 15th media release from the Nova Scotia Department of Health Promotion and Protection:

A new report will better position government and its partners to help Nova Scotians at risk of attempting suicide.

The report, Suicide and Attempted Suicide in Nova Scotia, was released today, July 15. Its purpose is to help those who work in the areas of suicide prevention, intervention and support.

"Suicide is a very complex and sensitive public health issue," said Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief public health officer. "We need to talk about it more and better understand it to ensure the right programs and supports are in place to help Nova Scotians."

The report describes the conditions surrounding suicide and attempted suicide in Nova Scotia. The data is based on hospital and vital statistics records of suicides and suicide attempts from 1995 to 2004. It examines demographic factors, how people attempt suicide and complete suicide, and the types of health-care services used by Nova Scotians at risk.

"This report is a baseline we can use to evaluate future efforts on this important issue, and we've made good progress since 2004," said Dr. Strang. "We've developed a suicide prevention framework to reduce suicides and attempted suicides, we're doing additional research with the medical examiner's office, and we fund our community partners who work with Nova Scotians."

Dr. Stan Kutcher, Sun Life Financial chair in adolescent mental health, a partnership with the IWK Health Centre and Dalhousie University, said that even though suicide and suicide attempt rates are decreasing, and Nova Scotia is experiencing lower suicide rates than most Canadian provinces, there is more to be done.

"Improving care for people with mental disorders, enhancing the capability of health care and education professionals to identify people at risk, promoting overall good health and resiliency, and improving access to good mental health care, can all help further reduce Nova Scotia's suicide rates."

Highlights of the report include:

• the rate of hospitalizations for suicide attempts declined by 30 per cent over the 10-year period

• 55 per cent of those hospitalized were female

• Lower income was associated with higher rates of both hospitalizations for suicide attempts and suicide deaths

• The rate of suicide death declined from 11 to nine individuals per 100,000

• Nova Scotia's suicide rate was lower than the national average, nine out of 100,000 individuals compared to 11 out of 100,000

• 84 per cent of suicide deaths were male

• 55 per cent of suicide deaths were previously diagnosed with a mental disorder

The report is available online at www.gov.ns.ca/ohp/publications/Suicide_Report.pdf.

Media Contact:

Rachel Boomer
Health Promotion and Protection
902-424-5323
E-mail: rachel.boomer@gov.ns.ca

Also see:

Panel: Report says programs to prevent suicide working

Positive barrier

A letter to the editor published in today's edition of The Chronicle Herald:

Thanks to Steve Snider, CEO of the Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission, for finally moving to install a barrier that will substantially increase the difficulty of completing suicide from the Macdonald Bridge. Since the impetus to complete suicide often waxes and wanes, actions that can delay the final act leading to suicide may deter the suicidal individual from acting and may increase the probability of choosing life instead. Indeed, many people who have decided not to complete suicide or who have survived a suicide attempt go on to live positive and productive lives.

Restriction of lethal means is one of the few public health measures that have been associated with decreasing suicide rates. Although method substitution is technically possible, research has not been able to demonstrate a clear pattern of this occurring when a bridge barrier is erected. So will putting up a barrier on the Macdonald Bridge save lives? Probably. Will it send a clear message of concern for this important health issue? Totally! Is it about time this happened? Absolutely!

As important as Mr. Snider’s role was in moving this agenda forward, the true heroes are Carol Cashen and a group of concerned citizens and mental health advocates. Ms. Cashen is a public health nurse and the mother of a young man who took his life by jumping from the Macdonald Bridge. With other members of the community, with the input of the Canadian Mental Health Association and with responsible reporting, Carol and the citizens of HRM were able to accomplish what the professionals and government were not able to do. They are the people we all have to be thankful to.

Dr. Stan Kutcher
Sun Life Financial Chair in Adolescent Mental Health
Dalhousie and IWK Health Centre

Also see:

Macdonald bridge to get safety barrier

Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission to Install Barrier on the MacDonald Bridge (Teen Mental Health Blog)

After Abuse, Changes in the Brain

An article published in today's edition of The New York Times:

By Benedict Carey

For years, psychiatrists have known that children who are abused or neglected run a high risk of developing mental problems later in life, from anxiety and depression to substance abuse and suicide.

The connection is not surprising, but it raises a crucial scientific question: Does the abuse cause biological changes that may increase the risk for these problems?

Over the past decade or so, researchers at McGill University in Montreal, led by Michael Meaney [pictured], have shown that affectionate mothering alters the expression of genes in animals, allowing them to dampen their physiological response to stress. These biological buffers are then passed on to the next generation: rodents and nonhuman primates biologically primed to handle stress tend to be more nurturing to their own offspring, Dr. Meaney and other researchers have found.

Now, for the first time, they have direct evidence that the same system is at work in humans. In a study of people who committed suicide published Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers in Montreal report that people who were abused or neglected as children showed genetic alterations that likely made them more biologically sensitive to stress.

The findings help clarify the biology behind the wounds of a difficult childhood and hint at what constitutes resilience in those able to shake off such wounds.

The study “extends the animal work on the regulation of stress to humans in a dramatic way,” Jaak Panksepp, an adjunct professor at Washington State University who was not involved in the research, wrote in an e-mail message.

He added that the study “suggests pathways that have promoted the psychic pain that makes life intolerable,” and continued, “It’s a wonderful example of how the study of animal models of emotional resilience can lead the way to understanding human vicissitudes.”

In the study, scientists at McGill and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences compared the brains of 12 people who had committed suicide and who had had difficult childhoods with 12 people who had committed suicide and who had not suffered abuse or neglect as children.

The scientists determined the nature of the subjects’ upbringing by doing extensive interviews with next of kin, as well as investigating medical records. The brains are preserved at Douglas Hospital in Montreal as part of the Quebec Suicide Brain Bank, a program founded by McGill researchers to promote suicide studies that receives brain donations from around the province.

When people are under stress, the hormone cortisol circulates widely, putting the body on high alert. One way the brain reduces this physical anxiety is to make receptors on brain cells that help clear the cortisol, inhibiting the distress and protecting neurons from extended exposure to the hormone, which can be damaging.

The researchers found that the genes that code for these receptors were about 40 percent less active in people who had been abused as children than in those who had not. The scientists found the same striking differences between the abused group and the brains of 12 control subjects, who had not been abused and who died from causes other than suicide. “It is good evidence that the same systems are at work in humans that we have seen in other animals,” said Patrick McGowan, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Meaney’s lab at McGill and the lead author of the study.

His co-authors, along with Dr. Meaney, were Aya Sasaki, Ana C. D’Alessio, Sergiy Dymov, Benoît Labonté and Moshe Szyf, all of McGill, and Dr. Gustavo Turecki, a McGill researcher who leads the Brain Bank.

Because of individual differences in the genetic machinery that regulates stress response, experts say, many people manage their distress despite awful childhoods. Others may find solace in other people, which helps them regulate the inevitable pain of living a full life.

“The bottom line is that this is a terrific line of work, but there is a very long way to go either to understand the effects of early experience or the causes of mental disorders,” Dr. Steven Hyman, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard, wrote in an e-mail message.

Posting of this article is for the purposes of research into suicide.

Also see:

Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse

Childhood trauma has life-long effects on genes and the brain

Image and photograph courtesy of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute.

Suffers every day

A letter to the editor published in today's edition of The Chronicle Herald:

I have followed with great interest the story of Glen Race, who will be sentenced with life in prison for the murder of Darcy Manor of New York State. It most intrigued me that Jane Manor was able to make a statement to Mr. Race, hoping that he will "suffer just half the pain" that Mr. Manor’s family and friends had suffered.

I know how much people with schizophrenia suffer. My husband’s brother, Nigel, suffered from this mental illness for the better part of 25 years. He refused medication and treatment for most of his time with this illness, as he felt it "deadened" him. Even when he was ordered to take the medications, it was too easy for him to run.

I saw first-hand the tortured looks on Nigel’s face in times when he could somewhat manage his symptoms, and I had to fight with anger when he forced entry into our home and had to be forcibly removed by police at gun point.

In the end, Nigel took his own life, only a few months before Mr. Race murdered Darcy Manor. I realize Mr. Race’s crime is a punishable offence and he needs to serve his time, but I hope we can all spare one moment of compassion for Mr. Race, and all people afflicted with mental illness. Mrs. Manor need not hope that Mr. Race will "suffer just half the pain" her family suffers. I am sure Mr. Race suffers every day, from having to cope with this most terrible mental illness.

Mental illness needs a higher profile in our community; we need to spend more on this often marginalized sector of the health care population.

Leslie Hill, Dartmouth

Also see:

'Unspeakable sorrow' haunts murder suspect's family

Suicide risk in schizophrenia: learning from the past to change the future

The abstract of a review paper published in the March 16, 2007, edition of Annals of General Psychiatry:

By Maurizio Pompili, Xavier F. Amador, Paolo Girardi1, Jill Harkavy-Friedman, Martin Harrow, Kalman Kaplan, Michael Krausz, David Lester, Herbert Y Meltzer, Jiri Modestin, Lori P. Montross, Preben Bo Mortensen, Povl Munk-Jørgensen, Jimmi Nielsen, Merete Nordentoft, Pirjo Irmeli Saarinen, Sidney Zisook, Scott T Wilson and Roberto Tatarelli

Suicide is a major cause of death among patients with schizophrenia. Research indicates that at least 5–13% of [individuals living with schizophrenia] die by suicide, and it is likely that the higher end of range is the most accurate estimate. There is almost total agreement that [people living with schizophrenia] who [are] more likely to commit suicide [are] young, male, white and never married, with good premorbid function, post-psychotic depression and a history of substance abuse and suicide attempts. Hopelessness, social isolation, hospitalization, deteriorating health after a high level of premorbid functioning, recent loss or rejection, limited external support, and family stress or instability are risk factors for suicide in patients with schizophrenia. Suicidal [individuals with schizophrenia] usually fear further mental deterioration, and they experience either excessive treatment dependence or loss of faith in treatment. Awareness of illness has been reported as a major issue among suicidal patients with schizophrenia, yet some researchers argue that insight into the illness does not increase suicide risk.

Protective factors play also an important role in assessing suicide risk and should also be carefully evaluated. The neurobiological perspective offers a new approach for understanding self-destructive behavior among patients with schizophrenia and may improve the accuracy of screening [these individuals] for suicide. Although, there is general consensus on the risk factors, accurate knowledge as well as early recognition of patients at risk is still lacking in everyday clinical practice. Better knowledge may help clinicians and caretakers to implement preventive measures.

This review paper is the results of a joint effort between researchers in the field of suicide in schizophrenia. Each expert provided a brief essay on one specific aspect of the problem. This is the first attempt to present a consensus report as
well as the development of a set of guidelines for reducing suicide risk among schizophenia patients.

I have taken the liberty to edit the abstract to remove the word schizophrenic.

To read the entire paper, click here (PDF).

Thanks go to the Lancashire Care Library & Information Service for bringing this paper to my attention.

Teen suicide rate remains high

From the September 3rd edition of the Chicago Tribune:

Researchers look for cause, Judith Graham writes

A year after experts sounded an alarm about a sharp rise in the number of young people taking their lives, teen suicide rates remain higher than expected, according to research published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The new data, from 2005, suggest that the long-term decline in teen suicide rates throughout the 1990s and the early part of this decade has moderated and may be nearing an end. Still, the findings are far from definitive.

The new JAMA report relies on a "what if" calculation. First, researchers looked at suicide trends for 10- to 19-year-olds from 1996 to 2003, a period when suicide rates sloped downward. Next, they predicted what suicide rates would have been in 2005 if the trend held.

The predicted rate of teen suicide for that year was 3.8 deaths per 100,000 young people; the actual rate was 4.49 deaths per 100,000, a statistically significant difference.

"Based on recent historical trends, we would have expected these rates to be a lot lower," said Jeffrey Bridge, lead author of the JAMA research letter and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University. "We need to understand what's causing this."

To read the entire article, click here.

SSC NEWS RELEASE

Schizophrenia Society of Canada Supports The Violet Bloom Campaign to Raise Awareness About Suicide Prevention

WINNIPEG, JULY 31, 2008 - Chris Summerville, Interim CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada (SSC), is pleased to announce the SSC’s involvement in, and support of, The Violet Bloom Campaign created and designed by Toronto film writer/director/producer Silvia Kovatchev. Dedicated toward raising awareness about suicide prevention, the Campaign is designed to support the work of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, along with Kids Help Phone, the National Network for Mental Health, and Active Minds in their efforts to better educate people about suicide prevention, and create the necessary educational materials used by these organizations in their work.

The highlight of the Campaign is the production of a film entitled: 2Violet, a story about the unusual relationship that Nona, an actress with schizophrenia, and her teenage daughter, Violet - an aspiring writer – have with Sal, an independent filmmaker. The story intertwines reality with the realities of mental illness and an artist’s imagination, which are often indistinguishable as they form an endless continuum. All these realities are driven by different forms of love.

The Violet Bloom Campaign will go through a variety of stages:

• raising awareness about suicide prevention and funds for the production of the upcoming feature film 2Violet
• production of the film
• screening the film at different festivals
• special screenings of the film at university campuses, schools, corporations, organizations, followed by Q&A sessions with cast, crew, representatives from the non-profit groups
• based on the film, creating educational materials that the non-profit groups can use in their work
• development of an ongoing discussion board on www.2Violet.com where people share their reasons to live and read why others think life IS worth living
  

“We are very pleased to be a part of this wonderful and much-needed campaign, says Mr. Summerville. “Unfortunately, there remains a deafening silence in our society when it comes to talking about suicide. The subject is definitely ‘taboo’ in many circles, so any opportunity we see to support a campaign that helps stop the suffering of those who are caught in this silence, we are delighted to do so.”

FACTS ABOUT SUICIDE

According to the World Health Organization, someone around the globe commits suicide every 40 seconds, while every three seconds, someone attempts to take their own life.

Some other important facts:

• Suicide rate is the highest among young adults (age 16-24)
• Suicide is the second leading cause of death in this age group
• In Canada, adolescent suicide has increased four-fold since the 1960s
• Approximately 3,500 Canadians take their own life each year, while another 50,000 attempt to do so
• Suicide rates are five to seven times higher for First Nations youth than for non-aboriginal
• While up to 40% of those living with schizophrenia will attempt suicide, 10% will die by suicide
• Depression is the most common mental health issue for those contemplating suicide.
  

Schizophrenia Society of Canada

The Schizophrenia Society of Canada began in 1979 and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for those affected by schizophrenia and psychosis through education, support programs, public policy and research. The Society works with 10 provincial societies in a federation model to: raise awareness and educate the public in order to reduce stigma and discrimination; support families and individuals; advocate for legislative change; and support research through the SSC Foundation and other independent efforts.


For further information, please contact:

Chris Summerville
Interim CEO
Schizophrenia Society of Canada
Tel: 905-415-2007
Email: Chris@schizophrenia.ca

Shift: What's the Story - Reporting on mental health and suicide

From Shift...:

This handbook is packed with useful facts, figures and contacts. It is designed to help you do your job when covering these stories, whether you’re a print, broadcast or magazine journalist.

The handbook also contains tips on how best to avoid causing needless offence - or worse - to your many readers and viewers affected by mental health problems. They apply whether you are covering a murder, a suicide or in fact wherever mental health crops up in the news, which can be pretty much anywhere. Our aim is to help you cover these stories properly and, at the same time, improve public understanding and avoid adding to the problems faced by people with mental health problems.

Suicide: scientific overview and relevance for trauma care providers

An abstract from the journal Trauma, Vol. 9, No. 3, 213-220 (2007):

By Marie Crandall

Department of Surgery, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, USA, mcrandall@northwestern.edu

The World Health Organization estimates that in the year 2000, approximately one million people died from suicide worldwide. Over the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60%, with a particularly precipitous rise among young people. The underlying psychology of suicide is complex and individual. However, certain themes emerge from studying individuals who have attempted or completed suicides. This paper will provide an overview of suicide and suicidal behaviour as it relates to trauma practitioners, detailing risk factors, biologic and genetic interactions, and opportunities for prevention and treatment.

Key Words: trauma • injury • suicide • prevention • review • epidemiology