SPRC Home> News> The Weekly Spark

Search the Weekly Spark

Browse Issue By Date

The Weekly Spark – Week of February 12, 2012

<Previous

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Help SAMHSA highlight advances of the behavioral health field
This year, SAMHSA turns 20 - an important milestone for the behavioral health field. To recognize the progress in prevention, treatment, and recovery, SAMHSA wants to highlight the important milestones that have occurred in behavioral health over the past 20 years and is seeking input on the most noteworthy accomplishments and changes over the past several years. Suggestions might include groundbreaking studies, promising practices, important legislation and court decisions, or other great strides made by the field. The online forum is currently open and will close Monday, March 5, at 9 a.m. eastern time.

Archived presentation of SPRC Research to Practice Webinar Bullying and Suicide Prevention now available
The audio recording and pdf presentation for SPRC’s most recent Research to Practice Webinar, Bullying and Suicide Prevention, are now available for download. Presenters were Anat Brunstein Klomek, Ph.D. and Catherine Bradshaw, Ph.D., M.Ed.

THRIVE (Tribal Health: Reaching out InVolves Everyone) suicide prevention and anti-bullying materials available
The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board announces the availability of free suicide prevention and anti-bullying materials from the THRIVE media campaign. Community is the Healer that Breaks the Silence (suicide prevention) materials and Stand Up, Stand Strong (bullying prevention) materials are available.

---

RESEARCH SUMMARIES:

Recommendations to Prevent Suicide among Older Adults
Key considerations for preventing suicide in older adults: Consensus opinions of an expert panel. Erlangsen, A., Nordentoft, M., Conwell, Y., Waern, M., De Leo, D., Lindner, R.,…Lapierre, S.; International Research Group on Suicide Among the Elderly. Crisis, 32(2), 106-109.

An international expert panel created in 2009 at the First International Conference on Elderly and Suicide recently published a list of “key considerations for future prevention projects that would address suicide and suicidal behavior in older adults.”

The panel issued recommendations at the universal, selective, and indicated prevention levels and “unanimously agreed that evidence-based findings are scant and that there is an urgent need for studies documenting outcomes of intervention aimed at reducing suicidality in older people.”

The panel agreed that universal prevention measures should include self-administered depression screens, means restriction, and strategies to help older adults cope with their increasing dependence on others. The members also reached consensus on the need for education on healthy aging as well as risk and protective factors for suicide among older adults. They also recommended that guidelines for reporting suicide in older adults should be developed and disseminated.

Selective interventions endorsed by the panel include providing screening tools to staff in medical and social service settings; improving the treatment of psychiatric problems, sleep issues, pain, and physical ailments among older adults; improving outreach to older adults, especially men, who may be isolated or under stress; and educating professionals and others about how alcohol abuse, changes such as retirement and the loss of a driver’s license, and physical infirmities can contribute to the risk of suicide among older adults.

Some of the panel’s recommendations concerning indicated prevention strategies include: offering “assertive help after a suicide attempt”; implementing collaborative care management in geriatric healthcare settings; training healthcare and social service professionals in the “detection, intervention, and management of depression and suicide in later life”; and using gatekeeper training to teach laypeople to recognize and respond to suicide risk in older adults.

The panel also stressed the general importance of (1) evaluating interventions, (2) creating a surveillance system that can track suicidal behavior at the community level, (3) using multiple components that addres all three prevention levels of prevention, and (4) the need for resource centers to assist organizations and agencies working to prevent suicide.

Resource Notes

A review of elderly suicide prevention programs was featured in the February 5, 2012 issue of the Weekly Spark.

Promoting Emotional Health and Preventing Suicide: A Toolkit for Senior Living Communities is available at no cost from the publications section of the SAMHSA website (http://store.samhsa.gov/product/Promoting-Emotional-Health-and-Preventing-Suicide/SMA10-4515).


Link to Abstract

---

NEWS HEADLINES:

National News

A hope that Don Cornelius' apparent suicide opens door on taboo topic, The Huffington Post, Feb. 7, 2012
This recent blog post in the Huffington Post looks at the recent death of television show host and promoter Don Cornelius through the lens of suicide prevention in the black community. “This may be an opportunity, since he was so very well-known and such a cultural icon in the black community, to stir up some discussion about suicide among black people and ways to head it off or prevent it to begin to bring the figures down,” said Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor Alvin Poussaint. According to Poussaint and Donna Barnes, co-founder of the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide, depression and suicide tend to be taboo topics in the black community. “You can’t prevent what you don’t know and you don’t talk about,” said Barnes. “We don’t talk about it so how do we know who is suffering and who is not?” On the positive side, this tendency to hide feelings of depression or suicidal ideation may be changing. According to Sean Joe of the University of Michigan’s School of Medicine, talking about suicide “…is more acceptable among younger generations than older generations. “Older people tend to stigmatize it more because of religious reasons and the thought that black people don’t really engage in that kind of behavior.”
Link to Article

Spark Extra! Read more about suicide in the American black community http://www.sprc.org/library/BlacksFactSheet.pdf

Marine fights conviction for suicide attempt, says it contradicts push to reduce suicides, The Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2012
An unusual case in which a Marine was court-martialed on a charge of “intentional self-injury without intent to avoid service” illustrates some of the complexities of handling suicidal behavior within the military. Private Lazzaric T. Caldwell deliberately injured himself in 2010 after learning that he would be facing disciplinary action, including a charge of larceny. After receiving medical treatment, he learned that he would be facing court-martial for self-injury charges. “I thought it was unfair and I thought it was just kind of morally wrong to punish somebody for something of that nature,” said Caldwell. “Seeing the kind of state I was in, there should have been a way of getting help instead of just a punishment.” According to Craig Bryan, a former Air Force psychologist who has studied military suicides, it is rare for a commander to convene a court-martial on self-injury charges. In these rare cases, the military has interpreted the suicide attempt as a way to avoid disciplinary action.
Link to Article

No State News Found for the week of February 12, 2012

International News

Taiwan:  New Taipei to adopt new suicide prevention measure soon , Focus Taiwan News Channel, Feb. 2, 2012
The city of New Taipei will soon institute regulations on the sale of charcoal. The move follows on the success of a suicide prevention measure undertaken in Hong Kong, where suicide rates fell after the government imposed a limit on the number of shops selling charcoal. When the new rules take effect, consumers in the city of New Taipei will have to present their name, identification, and contact number when purchasing charcoal. Suicide warnings will also be placed on bags of charcoal, and suicide prevention messages will be posted in public locations such as bridges and buildings. Suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning using charcoal is the most common suicide method in Taiwan, according to the New Taipei health department.
Link to Article

United Kingdom:  Measures “reduced suicide rate”, BBC, Feb. 1, 2012
According to a new study published in The Lancet, a series of suicide prevention reforms introduced by the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales appear to have reduced the suicide rate among people receiving mental health care through NHS mental health trusts. “The community care reforms of the last decade seem to have had a positive impact on patient suicide – providing more intensive support to the most vulnerable patients appears to have improved their survival,” said researcher Louis Appleby. The reforms included setting up 24-hour crisis teams and plans for patients who refused treatment, as well as holding reviews after all suicides. The researchers can’t be 100 percent sure that the reforms were responsible for the reduction in the suicide rate, but they estimate that “there were 200 or 300 fewer suicides per year” as a result of the measures, according to researcher Navneet Kapur of the University of Manchester.
Link to Article

Spark Extra! Read the full text of “Implementation of mental health service recommendations in England and Wales and suicide rates, 1997—2006: A cross-sectional and before-and-after observational study” http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/mentalhealth/research/suicide/prevention/nci/projects/FullLancetFeb12.pdf

---

FUNDING OPORTUNITIES:

QPR Mini-Grants for Community Capacity Building
Deadline:  open
Amount: Grantees may receive up to 200 QPR Gatekeeper Training for Suicide Prevention e-learning licenses during the grant year; grantees are provided with 100 licenses upon program launch plus an additional 100 licenses once the first 100 have been used and evaluated.
Eligible Applicants: For counties, tribes, parishes, community non-profit or governmental organizations dedicated to preventing suicide at the local level
Agency/Department: The QPR Institute

Summary: To date, more than one million Americans have been trained in the QPR Gatekeeper Training for Suicide Prevention program.
For detailed information go to:
http://www.qprinstitute.com/grants.html

---

ABOUT THE Weekly Spark

The Weekly Spark contains announcements and information about suicide, suicide prevention and mental health issues. We offer brief summaries of national, state and international news; analyses of relevant research findings; descriptions of funding opportunities, and links to additional resources. The Weekly Spark is written and edited by SPRC staff. Every effort is made to offer relevant and timely information with links to the original content as available.

We welcome your suggestions at info@sprc.org. In general, the Weekly Spark does not include editorials, opinion pieces or information on local events. Events may be listed in the SPRC Calendar http://www.sprc.org/featured_resources/trainingandevents/calendar/index.asp

Subscribe to or unsubscribe from the Weekly Spark at this page http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/sprc.

SPRC News Feed