Suicide remains a health crisis in America

By Brian Ward

Suicide still remains a leading cause of death in America, the CDC reports, with 45,979 suicide deaths in 2020—or about a death every 11 minutes. And for every suicide death, there are:

• Four hospitalizations for suicide attempts
• Eight emergency department visits related to suicide
• 27 self-reported suicide attempts
• 275 people who seriously considered suicide

While numbers for 2021 are not out yet, provisional data in the CDC’s Vital Statistics Rapid Release suggests that the rate has gone up. While research shows that the majority of victims tend to be older, male, Native American or White, there’s no group or demographic that is unaffected.  

While the healthcare field has made progress towards suicide screening and ligature risk prevention, more work is needed to address this long-standing health crisis.

Some suicide prevention and crisis resources for patients and healthcare workers are:
https://988lifeline.org/current-events/the-lifeline-and-988/

• https://www.samhsa.gov/childrens-awareness-day/resources-suicide-prevention
• https://sprc.org/micro-learning/effective-suicide-prevention/
• https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/campaigns-and-toolkits/suicide-prevention/
• https://www.crisistextline.org/
• https://teenlineonline.org/yyp/trevor-lifeline/
  http://www.suicide.org/suicide-hotlines.html