|
Abstract
|
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the CDC, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.2 In 2017, 47,173 people died by suicide in the U.S., and there were an estimated 1.4 million attempts.2 Suicide is one of three leading causes on the list that are on the rapid rise, as suicide rates have increased by almost 30% since 1999 in more than half of states.3 Suicide has become the third leading cause of death for youth ages 10-14 and the second leading cause of death for teens and young adults ages 15-24 and 25-34.4
It is instructive to compare the management of chronic illnesses with that of suicide. Since 1970, death rates from stroke have decreased by 77%, heart disease by 68%, and diabetes by 17%, despite their burden and risk factors remaining high.5 Although the number of people who died by suicide (over 47,000) was more than half those who died by diabetes (80,058) in 2017, the eff orts to address suicide in training programs and residencies are not equivalent to such eff orts for the other leading causes of death or consistent with death rates. In addition, these numbers do not take into account the estimated 1.4 million suicide attempts each year, which cost the health system approximately $69 billion in dollars and hospital stays.2 Exacerbating this issue, few health care organizations, regardless of size, have a sense of how many patients in their care are at risk for suicide, or how many have died by suicide. Additionally, many organizations do not even include suicide risk on their problem list, despite the importance of all members of the care team knowing it is a diagnosis that is a risk to survival. In comparison, most organizations have diabetes registries and can quickly report on the number of diabetics. Hospitals have a registry of heart surgery patients and track them for periods of time after surgery. Despite rising numbers and growing severity, there are currently few to no similar eff orts for suicide...
Language: en |