The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) second annual National Prevention Week begins on Sunday, May 12. This national health observance, which continues through May 18, aims to increase public awareness of, and action around, substance abuse and mental health issues. This year’s theme – Your voice. Your choice. Make a difference. – emphasizes that the choices we make each day are important and have a real effect on our health and the well-being of our families and communities. Each day of National Prevention Week 2013 has a unique focus to recognize states’ and communities’ prevention efforts and highlight multiple facets of behavioral health:
May 12: Prevention and Cessation of Tobacco Use
May 13: Prevention of Underage Drinking
May 14: Prevention of Prescription Drug Abuse and Illicit Drug Use
May 15: Prevention of Alcohol Abuse
May 16: Suicide Prevention
May 17: Promotion of Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Well-being
May 18: (Communities identify an issue of their choice)
Our nation’s states and communities provide many evidence-based programs and strategies promoting mental and emotional well-being and preventing substance abuse. SAMHSA applauds their excellent work in showing that prevention works. As a result of states’ and communities’ concerted prevention efforts, important progress has been made in many areas, such as in the decline of underage binge and heavy drinking rates between 2002 and 20111. However, much work remains to be done.
Full story on national prevention week at DrugFree.org
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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
A new national strategy, unveiled by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin and representatives from the military and the private sector, aims to reduce the number of suicides in the United States.
Suicide, according to the group, is becoming a serious public health problem in America. For every person who commits suicide, more than 30 others attempt it, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In fact, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the country, claiming more than twice as many lives each year as homicide – and that number is rising.
The 2012 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention hopes to give families, medical personnel and communities more options to help those who may be thinking about suicide. It also strives to allocate more money to clinics to provide help to more people, along with resources to help better diagnose suicide in certain individuals.
According to HHS, although suicide affects all age groups, teens and military personnel, as well as the elderly, seem to have the highest rates.
Full story of fighting suicide at CNN Health
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Researchers, doctors and patients tend to agree that during the high-risk period after an attempted suicide, the treatment of choice is close contact, follow-up and personal interaction in order to prevent a tragic repeat. Now, however, new research shows that this strategy does not work.
These surprising results from Mental Health Services in the Capital Region of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen have just been published in the British Medical Journal.
Researchers from Mental Health Services in the Capital Region of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen have just concluded a large study on the effect of an assertive outreach and intervention programme for young people after an attempted suicide. The surprising conclusion is that increased attention and support for the patient do not have a significant effect.
- Our results show that there is no difference between receiving standard treatment after an attempted suicide, or receiving assertive outreach intervention in addition, explains Britt Morthorst, research assistant, Psychiatric Centre Copenhagen and the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, who led the study.
Full story of young people at risk of suicide at Science Daily
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By Calum McKinney
According to many experts, suicide is likely the second leading cause of death among college students.
While it “is not possible for an institution to prevent every situation,” Anthony Jenkins, vice president for Student Affairs at University of Maryland Eastern Shore, said efforts to prevent students from harming themselves and others have increased dramatically on campuses across the country following the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois University in 2008.
A graduate of Virginia Tech who went on to serve on its crisis management team, Jenkins said he has helped create behavioral assessment teams at several of the institutions where he has worked.
“We have seen an influx across higher education nationally of more students entering with mental health issues, seeking more psychological support,” he said, “In the last 10 to 15 years, institutions have been put in the interesting situation of how to address issues of what is best for the individual versus the university. It can be a delicate balancing act, making sure that we’re able to sustain enough counselors and support staff to meet students’ needs and also balance that with funding issues.”
Full story at Delmarva Now
By John Sullivan
Call for help: Those having thoughts about suicide should call 800-273-TALK.
Few deaths scar a community as deeply as a teen suicide. Even so, Ann Marie D’Aliso, who lost her son Patrick, 16, to suicide in 2004, had difficulty finding a school that would allow her to talk to kids about her family tragedy.
“It was a topic that the schools didn’t know how to handle,” D’Aliso said of suicide. “It was the fear that if you talk about it, it will happen.”
Doors have opened for D’Aliso, albeit slowly, triggered in some cases by more tragedy, such as two suicides in the Monroe-Woodbury School District last year. D’Aliso and other suicide survivors have been opening the eyes of school officials and other leaders about the need for more awareness about suicide in communities where mention of the topic was once considered anathema.
She is part of a growing group of suicide survivors in our region who are making up the heart, as well as the muscle, behind a rapidly evolving awareness and prevention campaign that state mental health officials say is helping to keep New York’s suicide rate one of the lowest in the nation.
Driven by their grief, these survivors rally behind the belief that more talk, not less, will help remove the stigma associated with suicide, and possibly even help eradicate the problem.
In doing so, they are challenging long-held conventions about how to address the topic among vulnerable populations, even as they help energize the movement to spread the word about the issue in town squares, churches and local governments, and among businesses.
Full story at Times Herald-Record
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) second annual National Prevention Week begins on Sunday, May 12. This national health observance, which continues through May 18, aims to increase public awareness of, and action around, substance abuse and mental health issues. This year’s theme – Your voice. Your choice. Make a difference. – emphasizes that the choices we make each day are important and have a real effect on our health and the well-being of our families and communities. Each day of National Prevention Week 2013 has a unique focus to recognize states’ and communities’ prevention efforts and highlight multiple facets of behavioral health:
