|
Abstract
|
In the face of perennially high suicide rates, Utah's health system leaders and community advocates work together to stem the tide...
...Over nearly a decade, particularly in the past five years, clinicians, public health leaders, state legislators, and others across Utah have coalesced in an effort to turn the tragic tide.
Intermountain Healthcare, the state's largest health system and employer, has constituted one cornerstone of these efforts, making screening for suicidal thoughts more routine, including at annual checkups. The health system has opened three behavioral health access centers in Utah, with a fourth slated to open in 2022, to provide an area separate from the emergency department with clinicians trained in mental health crises. Intermountain Healthcare also created a mental health crisis hotline shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. These steps have occurred alongside other suicide prevention efforts on multiple other levels statewide, including the passage of legislation requiring schools to implement suicide prevention strategies as well as the expansion of mental health and crisis support services. Meanwhile, a high-profile suicide prevention campaign called Live On has highlighted prevention resources for community members, including targeting specific populations,3 such as with a Spanish-language campaign launched in 2021 to reach the state's growing Latino population.4
The state's ambitious goal, set in a 2017 report by the Utah Suicide Prevention Coalition, was to reduce suicide rates 10 percent by 2021.5 A big educational focus, through Live On and other efforts, has been to reassure people that they won't plant the idea of suicide in someone's mind by simply asking whether they are considering harming themselves, says Taryn Hiatt, Utah/Nevada area director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention...
Language: en |