Preventing Suicide Is Possible, But How?
Is suicide prevention possible? Even if this conduct, like any other typical of human beings, is complex and influenced by many variables, each with its own weight, some indicators can guide us in its identification and prevention.
Some population groups can be considered at risk and so can some circumstances. These include mental illnesses, especially depression and schizophrenia. But also personality disorders, in particular borderline and antisocial, chronic disabling physical pathologies that cause biological and / or psychological vulnerability.
Several action protocols have been developed at almost all levels of the National Health System (NHS) in order to prevent suicide. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around one million people commit suicide worldwide every year.
These data make suicide one of the three leading causes of death of adolescents and young adults, as well as the tenth cause among the general population, with an increase in the incidence rate in the last 50 years of 60%.
What Approach To Prevent Suicide?
There are two possible approaches to preventing suicide:
1) Strategies aimed at high-risk population groups , as well as psychiatric cases with previous suicide attempts, emotional disorders, alcoholism, etc. In these cases the purpose is:
- Optimize treatment for mental disorders and ensure patient integrity.
- Improve the continuity of care and the social and health coordination of subjects at high risk of suicide, once discharged from the psychiatric ward, in particular without interrupting Therapeutic Touch.
- To improve the psychiatric training of general practitioners to arrive at an early diagnosis and effective treatment for the patient with mental disorders that could promote suicidal behaviors.
2 . Strategies aimed at the general population such as:
- Inform users about suicidal behaviors: incidence, risk factors, behavioral anomalies, etc.
- Raise awareness in the media in order to prevent the emulation effect, especially among young people.
- Psychoeducation in social centers, at school, in the workplace, in order to promote health, a better quality of life, acquire the resources or strategies to cope with stress, as well as favor the acquisition of social skills, etc.
- Restructuring of the availability of means that encourage suicide and security measures in places used to commit suicide.
- Regulate the consumption of alcohol and other substances.
Misconceptions
There are a number of beliefs about suicide that are shared by a large part of society; these, however, are incorrect and should be revised:
| Wrong belief | Scientific criterion |
| Whoever wants to kill does not say it. | Nine victims on I gave had clearly expressed their intentions, one had given to understand his intentions. |
| Whoever says it does not. | Anyone who committed suicide had announced in words, with threats, gestures or changes in conduct what was about to happen. |
| People who attempt suicide don’t do it because they really want to die, but out of need for attention. | Even if not all those who attempt suicide wish to die, pointing them out as exhibitionists is a mistake, because they are people who cannot adapt to reality and find alternatives that do not involve taking their own life. |
| If he really wanted to kill himself he would have thrown himself under a train. | Anyone at risk of suicide has an ambivalent experience, that is, they feel both the desire to die and to live. The method chosen to commit suicide does not reflect the desire to die of those who use it; offering them an alternative method that presents a higher probability of death is considered to be an incitement to suicide (that is, to provide help in carrying out the fact) and is punished by the Criminal Code. |
| Those who overcome a crisis are in no danger of relapse. | Almost half of the people who have gone through a profound existential crisis and who have attempted suicide have done so within three months of the first emotional crisis, when everyone thought that the danger was averted. |
| Anyone who has tried to commit suicide will be in danger for life. | Between 1% and 2% of people who try to commit suicide succeed within the first year of the first attempt and between 10% and 20% in their lifetime. A suicide crisis lasts for hours, days, rarely weeks, so it is important to know how to recognize them. |
| All those who kill themselves are depressed. | Although all depressed people are at risk for suicide, not all who do suffer from this mood disorder. They may suffer from schizophrenia, alcoholism, personality disorders, etc. |
| Anyone who commits suicide has a mental illness. | People with mental disorders commit suicide more often than the rest of the population, but this is not a prerequisite. Nonetheless, a suffering person is more at risk. |
| Suicide is hereditary | Suicide has not been proven to be hereditary, although it is often easy to trace several family members who ended their lives by suicide. In these cases, the predisposition to a specific mental illness of which suicide is the main symptom is inherited, such as emotional disturbances and schizophrenia. |
| Preventing a suicide is impossible because it is the result of an impulse | Anyone who is about to commit suicide exhibits a number of symptoms that have been referred to as presuicidal syndrome. It consists of a constriction of feelings and intellect, an inhibition of aggression – which is no longer directed towards others but rather towards oneself – and the presence of suicidal ideas; this can be detected in time. |
| By talking about suicide with an at-risk person, you could be encouraging them to commit suicide | It has been shown that talking about suicide with a person at risk, rather than inciting, stimulating or inculcating this idea reduces the risk of committing the act and may represent the only way for the subject to analyze their own self-destructive intentions. |
| Approaching a person in a suicidal crisis without due preparation, letting oneself be guided only by commonplace, is harmful and can delay the implementation of the due treatment | If common sense prompts us to take a careful look and predisposes us to listen, driven as we are by the desire to help the person in crisis and find alternative solutions to suicide, then we will help prevent suicide. |
| Only psychiatrists can implement suicide prevention measures | Certainly the psychiatrist is a professional expert in identifying the risk of suicide and managing it, but he is not the only one. Anyone who shows interest in offering help to the person is decisive in the prevention phase: “Suicide is the worst form of murder because it leaves no room for remorse”. |
Who to ask for help?
When a person begins to have suicidal thoughts, they can turn to different agencies for help:
- DSM: Department of Mental Health.
- Mental Health Centers (CSM), which provide guidelines for the protection of mental health: http://www.salute.gov.it/imgs/C_17_pubblicazioni_1905_allegato.pdf
- Italian Association for the Protection of Mental Health: AITSAM.
- Telephone Friend: Telephone service active from 10:00 to 24:00, in which help is offered to anyone who wants to overcome emotional problems.
- Healthcare professionals.
These resources are invaluable, but they are of little use if they fail to reach people in danger. That is why all of us, as members of society, have a fundamental role as communicators and collaborators.
