Category: Depression

Here's How Schools can Support Students' Mental Health

9/27/2016

About one in five children in the United States shows signs of a mental health disorder — anything from ADHD to eating disorders to suicide.

And yet, as we've been reporting this month, many schools aren't prepared to work with these students. Often, there's been too little training in recognizing the problems, the staff who are trained are overworked, and there just isn't enough money.
When there are enough people to handle the job, how should all the different roles fit together?

Many experts point to one model. It's got a bureaucratic name — the "multi-tiered system of supports" — but when you picture it, just imagine an upside-down pyramid, or maybe a funnel. It starts with support for everyone and moves on to more and more specialized help.

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By Meg Anderson, NPREd

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Bullying, Excessive Internet Use Put Teens at Increased Suicide Risk, Study Finds

6/29/2016

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Being bullied or spending an excessive amount of time on the internet could increase the risk of teen suicides, according to a new study released by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Though the overall suicide rate among teens has decreased since 1990, it was still worryingly high in 2013 -- 1,748 per 100,000 teens between the ages of 15 and 19 -- meaning suicide is the second-leading cause of death for teens, according to the study.

In addition, boys were more likely to die by suicide but girls were nearly twice as likely to attempt suicide, the study found.

And while suicide affects all racial groups, American Indian/Alaska Native males had the highest suicide rate and black females have the lowest rate of suicide, according to the study.

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By Gillian Mohney, ABC News

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1 in 13 Young U.S. Adults Considered Suicide

6/24/2016

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About one in 13 young adults in the United States had serious thoughts of suicide in 2013-2014, federal officials reported Thursday.

That rate of 7.4 percent translates into 2.6 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 25, researchers said.

"Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young adults, and it is preventable," said Kana Enomoto. She's principal deputy administrator at the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which released the report.

"We need to reach out to young people with the message that help is at hand, and promote effective programs for saving lives by treating people at risk whenever and wherever they need it," Enomoto added in an agency news release.

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By E.J. Mundell, HealthDay, CBS News

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As Suicide Rates Rise, Scientists Find New Warning Signs

6/10/2016

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Scientists are making headway in the search for solutions to one of the most vexing problems in mental health: How to predict who is at risk for suicide.

Researchers are hunting for so-called biomarkers, such as patterns of brain activity on fMRI scans or levels of stress hormones in the blood, linked to suicidal thoughts and acts. They are creating computer algorithms, fed with tens of thousands of pieces of data, to come up with measures of risk. They are looking at sleep patterns and even responses to specialized computer tasks that can reveal unconscious biases toward self-harm.

The need is great. The reality is that it is very hard for psychiatrists and psychologists to identify who is at risk for suicide. They rely heavily on simply asking patients.

But people often conceal their plans. Indeed, researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital found that clinicians were no more accurate than chancein predicting which patients visiting a psychiatric emergency room were likely to attempt suicide in the next six months.
Widely accepted risk factors, like being male, having a history of mental illness and experiencing stressors like a job or relationship loss, are often not specific enough to be much help.

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By Andrea Petersen, The Wall Street Journal

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Why Are Ski Towns Seeing More Suicides?

5/19/2016

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On a sunny morning in late February, Tom Slocum, a 57-year-old ski bum in Telluride, Colorado, walked up Tomboy Road, a popular hiking route that winds above the north side of town. An avid athlete and skier, Slocum moved to Telluride in 1984, a couple of years after graduating college. Like many ski town residents, he’d worked several jobs over the years, in hotels, mostly. Over the last five or so years, he’d grown frustrated with his life—presumably by the fact the he was a middle-aged man living in a shack behind a multimillion dollar home, struggling to get by in one of the country’s most idyllic ski towns.

About a mile up Tomboy, Slocum pulled over and sat down next to a small creek. From his perch above Telluride, he looked out at the majestic San Juan Mountains, which towered above the 2,000-person town and its pastel Victorians. Across the valley, the Bear Creek basin etched up the east side of the resort and disappeared into a playground of snow-capped peaks. Then, just after dawn cast its first rays, Slocum pulled out a handgun and shot himself.

Slocum’s death was the first of three suicides that occurred in San Miguel County over two weeks in late February and early March. Then in May, a 46-year-old skier widely regarded as one of the best riders in the San Juans, took his life. The rash of self-inflicted deaths boosted the county’s rate of suicide by firearms over the past 12 months to more than six times higher than the national average. But Telluride isn’t alone. The number of suicides in Aspen, Colorado, is three times the country’s mean rate. Utah’s Salt Lake County, home to Alta and Snowbird, has almost twice as many suicides as the national average. And six suicides over two and a half years in Truckee, California, prompted the community to launch a suicide task force in 2014. Though tourists from around the world flock to these locales to ski their slopes and ride their single track, paradise harbors a darker reality: resort town residents are taking their lives at alarming rates.

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By Kelley Mcmillan, Beyond the Edge, National Geographic Adventure Blog

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How Do You Help Someone Who Is At Risk Of Suicide?

5/2/2016

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How do you help someone who is at risk of suicide?

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that suicide has been steadily increasing in the U.S. since 1999. Although men tend to kill themselves at higher rates than women, the biggest rate increase during that time has been among girls 10-14 years old, and the second biggest increase has been among women 45-64 years old.

But for every person who dies by suicide, there are many, many more who struggle with suicidal thoughts. "Lots of people think about it," says Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. "Suicide attempts are less frequent. Fortunately, dying by suicide is even less frequent."

NPR talked with Harkavy-Friedman and Dr. Jitender Sareen of the University of Manitoba, both psychiatrists, about what is known about youth suicide and best practices for preventing suicide. Harkavy-Friedman studies teen suicide prevention, and Sareen studies suicide trends among Native people in the Arctic. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Read the Full Article with Dr. Sareen as he answers questions on how to help someone you are concerned about.

By Rebecca Hersher, NPR

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U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High

4/22/2016

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WASHINGTON — Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

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By Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times

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How Data From a Crisis Text Line is Saving Lives

4/18/2016

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When a young woman texted DoSomething.org with a heartbreaking cry for help, the organization responded by opening a nationwide Crisis Text Line for people in pain. Nearly 10 million text messages later, the organization is using the privacy and power of text messaging to help people handle addiction, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, sexual abuse and more. But there's an even bigger win: The anonymous data collected by text is teaching us when crises are most likely to happen — and helping schools and law enforcement to prepare for them.

By Nancy Lublin, Crisis Text Line
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Common Ground: Reducing Gun Access

3/11/2016

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Reducing a suicidal person's access to guns can help save lives. And who better to take on this suicide prevention effort than the gun community, asserts Cathy Barber of Harvard’s Means Matter Campaign. Ralph Demicco, a former gun shop owner agrees, “I’ve experienced an awful lot of incidents where friends, customers, and acquaintances have taken their lives with firearms, so it’s a very striking issue to me.” Barber, Demicco, other gun owners, and public health professionals joined together to form the Gun Shop Project, forging an unlikely but highly successful partnership with the mission of reducing a suicidal person’s access to guns.

See more about this topic at Spark Talks

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Many Depressed Teens Don't Get Follow-Up Care

2/11/2016

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Depression can strike during the teen years, but too many U.S. teenagers with the illness are not getting proper follow-up care, a new study finds.

"These results raise concerns about the quality of care for adolescent depression," concluded a team led by Briannon O'Connor, who conducted the study while at New York University School of Medicine.
One expert wasn't surprised by the findings.

"Most adolescents who are depressed do not receive any treatment whatsoever for their impairments for many reasons, including lack of access to care, stigma, and a workplace shortage of trained child and adolescent psychiatrists," said Dr. Aaron Krasner, chief of the Adolescent Transitional Living Service at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn.

As the study authors explained, major depression affects 12 percent of teens, and as many as 26 percent of young people experience at least mild depression. Prompt treatment is crucial because failure to relieve depression increases the risk of recurrent depression and more impaired functioning in the long term, the researchers said.

By Healthfinder.gov - Read Full Article

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<<Previous

Here's How Schools can Support Students' Mental Health

Bullying, Excessive Internet Use Put Teens at Increased Suicide Risk, Study Finds

1 in 13 Young U.S. Adults Considered Suicide

As Suicide Rates Rise, Scientists Find New Warning Signs

Why Are Ski Towns Seeing More Suicides?

How Do You Help Someone Who Is At Risk Of Suicide?

U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High

How Data From a Crisis Text Line is Saving Lives

Common Ground: Reducing Gun Access

Many Depressed Teens Don't Get Follow-Up Care

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