Citation

Preskorn SH. Curr. Psychiatr. 2016; 15(11): 24, 30-32, 36-37.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Frontline Medical Communications)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Suicide is a staggering, tragic, and growing cause of death in the United States. One out of every 62 Americans will die from suicide, based on the national lifetime prevalence rate. (1) More than 42,000 Americans died from suicide in 2014, making suicide the second leading cause of death in individuals age 15 to 34, the fourth leading cause among those age 35 to 54, and the tenth leading cause of death in the country overall. (2) The incidence of suicide in the general population of the United States increased by 24% between 1999 and 2014. (3) This tragedy obviously is not solving itself.

The proposal

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes statistics about the number of suicides, as well as demographic information, collected from coroners and medical examiners across the country. However, these sources do not provide a biological sample that could be used to gather data concerning DNA, RNA, and other potential blood markers, including those reflecting inflammatory and epigenetic processes. However, such biological samples are commonly collected by the U.S. medicolegal death investigation system. In 2003, this system investigated 450,000 unnatural and/or unexplained deaths (ie, approximately 20% of the 2.4 million deaths in the United States that year). ...

Language: en