This past weekend it occurred to me that based on what I witnessed from one crisis center in a suburban US area, the suicide rate in this one county might be 2-3 times higher but for police intervention. On one weekend evening alone law enforcement officers (LEOs) intervened with an adult male with a shotgun who had just e-mailed a suicide note, pulled a 17-year old girl from the path of a commuter train, and transported a woman who swallowed a bottle of Rx psych meds to the ED. All subsequently were evaluated by a psychiatrist and found to be in imminent danger of suicide. Incidents like this happen 5-6 times weekly in addition to the approximately 1.5 to 1.7 suicides that occur weekly on average in this county. While the county is not necessarily representative of the US, it is still mind-boggling to think that emergency action by LEOs may be keeping the annual number of US suicides from being in the 84,000-126.000 range yearly. There are stats on US suicide deaths, some national survey data on attempts, but nothing on rescues before any medical injury ensued.
This may have some helpful info http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/national-strategy-suicide-prevention/full_report-rev.pdf
Hi Tony, we met again. Your question is very interesting but I have not come upon any statistics on this part of the world. It can be a difficult task for law enforcement officials. Coincidentally, while pondering over your question, a news update came in ... some marital issue, husband suspected wife has affair outside, husband killed wife at home in the living room ... and tried to kill himself several hours later ... neighbours alerted police ... police managed to cool him down and to open the gate to their apartment .,, there were signs of cuts on his left wrist (well, saved another life). Currently, the deseased is undergoing post-mortem and the husband is under remand - may be will be charged for murder. I don't think we have any kind of rapid response team as first responder. They are just normal policemen. I am not sure whether they have specially trained response team in your country?
Bob,
Always nice to hear from you. Local police agencies likely have data on "mental health calls" involving an acutely suicidal person but I haven't found a report on these incidents at any level. My point is, in the US at least, police are far and away the most active suicide crisis intervention resource. In fact, they account for most suicide prevention period and put our mental health system to shame. Most officers and state troopers learn these skills on the job though training such as you mention has become increasingly the practice over the last 20 years. Even without this training their roles as first responders and "serve and protect" mission put them at the scene of any suicidal act or call for help. They also help many at-risk individuals by getting them connected with services before they become acutely suicidal. The emergency psychiatric service, where I work has received 50%-60% of its referrals from local police for decades, with perhaps 70%-80% are related to suicidal behavior. Partly this is a result of a 3-day crisis intervention training that we have provided to the majority of officers in the county since 1975. There is also a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model that has been adopted in many US communities. It is not a question of what the police do in this area but how much. It would also be a good metric of suicide prevention effectiveness to monitor the their rate of suicide interventions. Of course, some actual prevention might free police up to do other things. Regards!
Hi Tony,
Good to hear from you. It's always interesting to hear news from the front liners. I just came upon this article from RG (from psychology perspective). It goes a level deeper than just depression into what they call "mental pain" or "psychological pain" - the complicated emotions people may be going through during the last hours. On the positive note, it does indicate that some suicide may not be a very impulsive act. They are going through the darkest period and pain (which can also fluctuate), and as the article described may be trying to "escape" from the "pain". It's a process ... and it may provide some time for intervention - for the immense pain to subside a bit ... and we save one life. There was a paragraph where the researchers mentioned they managed to intervene through telephone ... to bring that person out of the height of pain and the thought of suicide becomes weakened. This goes in line with your estimate that perhaps the rate will be 2-3 times higher if not because of police intervention. It may also indicate that not all people commit suicide quietly and quickly, and it's always too late to reach them, i.e. there is intervention time and opportunity. Come to think about the dedicated response team or crisis intervention team that are properly trained and equipped with resources, it can be something possible, more so given the high rate now (and compared to homicide, etc.). If a county or a small town can afford to have a dedicated fire station with stand-by resources to save some property (of course sometimes they save lives), wouldn't it make equal sense to invest in such resources to save lives? Regards. [email protected]
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Psychology