The definition of suicide is the act of arranging and taking of one’s life. Not all people with mental health problems think about taking their lives, but there are a large number that do, and the horrible fact is that some succeed with this tragic event in their lives’.
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death, with depression as a major cause of suicide deaths. Suicide is a public health problem that causes suffering to families and communities nationwide, 1 person every 13 minutes dies from suicide in the United States, that is nearly 40,000 people a year. Suicide touches all races, and ethnic groups all over the country. The United States had over 5000 teens commit suicide in 2015. Depression and suicidal thoughts are not discriminatory, it effects men, as well as women, and children as young as six.
There are also groups that demonstrate a higher risk, people with medical conditions, people with mental and/or substance use disorders, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, as well as members of the military and veterans, and men in midlife and older men. Depression and the feeling of hopelessness, has many victims. When looking for underlying causes of why someone may try to take their life there is no single reason, although bullying is becoming connected to teen suicide, there are other reasons, such as drug use, and family problems which can be applied to all age groups. In a recent study of suicide letters, people do not commit suicide because they are in pain, they commit suicide because they don’t believe there is a reason to live and the world will be better off without them, because they have become a burden, and distress has been taken hold somewhere along the way.
(physicologytoday). Screening and assessing for suicide risk is an important aspect of suicide prevention, and with the three models Medical, Public Health and Human Services working together lives could be saved.
