September is National Suicide Prevention Month and one goal is to help provide information on suicide prevention programs and resources. Although it is important to focus on suicide prevention every day of every year, given the challenges of 2020, this year it may be even more important.
September is Suicide Prevention Month. This is a very important topic that touches many individuals around the world. In addition to our existing resources on suicide prevention, we will be have a series of blogs on the topic this month. Come back to check them out all month long! This month's CDP Presents webinar will be on "Key Elements for the Effective Management and Resolution of Suicidality." This 90-minute presentation will offer evidence-based solutions to the management and treatment of suicidality, as well as clinical maxims from 25 years of treating suicidal individuals.
This article provides rationale for utilizing a suicide screening procedure in a sleep medicine setting and offers suggested elements for such screening. The authors note that the connection between sleep problems and suicide risk has become well established, although the mechanisms of this relationship are not yet clear. Even though research on the relationship between sleep problems and suicide is not new (these authors note that the relationship was known nearly sixty years ago!), an increase in the amount and specificity of research examining sleep and suicide has been fairly recent and has led to the inclusion of sleep disturbance as both a risk factor and a warning sign for suicide risk.
The Department of Defense’s Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness recently released an inaugural Annual Suicide Report (ASR). Along with data regarding suicides among Active Component, Guard and Reserve Service members, it also included the first ever number of suicide deaths among military spouses and dependents. According to the ASR, there were 186 reported military family member suicide deaths in CY17.