Every year, about 30,000 people die by suicide in the U.S., and some 650,000 receive emergency treatment after a suicide attempt. Often, those most at risk are the least able to access professional help. Reducing Suicide provides a blueprint for addressing this tragic and costly problem: how we can build an appropriate infrastructure, conduct needed research, and improve our ability to recognize suicide risk and effectively intervene. Rich in data, the book also strikes an intensely personal chord, featuring compelling quotes about people's experience with suicide. The book explores the factors that raise a person's risk of suicide: psychological and biological factors including substance abuse, the link between childhood trauma and later suicide, and the impact of family life, economic status, religion, and other social and cultural conditions. The authors review the effectiveness of existing interventions, including mental health practitioners' ability to assess suicide risk among patients. They present lessons learned from the Air Force suicide prevention program and other prevention initiatives. And they identify barriers to effective research and treatment. This new volume will be of special interest to policy makers, administrators, researchers, practitioners, and journalists working in the field of mental health.

Part of the authoritative Oxford Textbooks in Psychiatry series, the new edition of the Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention remains a key text in the field of suicidology, fully updated with new chapters devoted to major psychiatric disorders and their relation to suicide.

Delving into a topic of perennial interest and concern, particularly among teenagers, this important volume addresses the full range of issues related to suicide and suggests ways to help those who struggle. While the risk of suicide is increasing across age groups, the good news is that with timely intervention, most suicides are preventable. Written primarily for high school and college students as well as for their teachers and parents, this guide combines relevant research and theories about suicide with current clinical thinking and approaches to diagnosis and treatment. Going beyond the clinical, the volume also explores suicide in history and in popular culture and examines relevant cultural, religious, moral, and ethical viewpoints. It looks at suicide among various demographic groups, probes psychological motivations and methods used, and discusses the controversy surrounding a person's right to die. What differentiates this work from others is that it covers the breadth of the subject but also considers issues in enough depth to make their importance and complexity clear. Readers will better understand the problem of suicide, its impact, and the approaches that can be used to prevent suicide and deal more effectively with at-risk individuals.

With recent studies using genetic, epigenetic, and other molecular and neurochemical approaches, a new era has begun in understanding pathophysiology of suicide. Emerging evidence suggests that neurobiological factors are not only critical in providing potential risk factors but also provide a promising approach to develop more effective treatment and prevention strategies. The Neurobiological Basis of Suicide discusses the most recent findings in suicide neurobiology. Psychological, psychosocial, and cultural factors are important in determining the risk factors for suicide; however, they offer weak prediction and can be of little clinical use. Interestingly, cognitive characteristics are different among depressed suicidal and depressed nonsuicidal subjects, and could be involved in the development of suicidal behavior. The characterization of the neurobiological basis of suicide is in delineating the risk factors associated with suicide. The Neurobiological Basis of Suicide focuses on how and why these neurobiological factors are crucial in the pathogenic mechanisms of suicidal behavior and how these findings can be transformed into potential therapeutic applications.

In the broadest treatment yet of suicide in Europe during the period 1500–1800, 11 authors combine elements of social, cultural, legal, and intellectual history to trace important changes in the ways Europeans experienced and understood voluntary death. Well into the seventeenth century, Europeans viewed suicide as a terrible crime and an unforgivable sin resulting from demonic temptation. By the late eighteenth century, however, suicide was rarely subject to judicial penalties, and society tended to blame self-inflicted death on insanity rather than on the devil. From Sin to Insanity shows that early modern Europe witnessed nothing less than the birth of modern suicide: increasing in frequency, self-inflicted death became decriminalized, secularized, and medicalized, viewed as a regrettable but not shameful result of reversals in fortune or physical or mental infirmity. The ten chapters focus on suicide cases and attitudes toward self-murder from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in geographical settings as diverse as Scandinavia and Hungary, France and Germany, England and Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands.

The idea that suicide may be an acceptable, rational option is rarely presented in professional literature. However, recent events and developments forcefully demonstrate that mental health professionals can no longer ignore the possibility that people can make a rational decision to die. After introducing the concept of rational suicide, the book explores the changing views of suicide over the centuries. Common arguments against rational suicide are examined and rebutted.

Perhaps never before has an objective, evidence-based review of the intersection between gun violence and mental illness been more sorely needed or more timely. Gun Violence and Mental Illness, written by a multidisciplinary roster of authors who are leaders in the fields of mental health, public health, and public policy, is a practical guide to the issues surrounding the relation between firearms deaths and mental illness. Tragic mass shootings that capture headlines reinforce the mistaken beliefs that people with mental illness are violent and responsible for much of the gun violence in the United States. This misconception stigmatizes individuals with mental illness and distracts us from the awareness that approximately 65% of all firearm deaths each year are suicides. This book is an apolitical exploration of the misperceptions and realities that attend gun violence and mental illness. The authors frame both pressing social issues as public health problems subject to a variety of interventions on individual and collective levels, including utilization of a novel perspective: evidence-based interventions focusing on assessments and indicators of dangerousness, with or without indications of mental illness. Reader-friendly, well-structured, and accessible to professional and lay audiences, the book: * Reviews the epidemiology of gun violence and its relationship to mental illness, exploring what we know about those who perpetrate mass shootings and school shootings. * Examines the current legal provisions for prohibiting access to firearms for those with mental illness and whether these provisions and new mandated reporting interventions are effective or whether they reinforce negative stereotypes associated with mental illness. * Discusses the issues raised in accessing mental health treatment in regard to diminished treatment resources, barriers to access, and involuntary commitment.* Explores novel interventions for addressing these issues from a multilevel and multidisciplinary public health perspective that does not stigmatize people with mental illness. This includes reviews of suicide risk assessment; increasing treatment engagement; legal, social, and psychiatric means of restricting access to firearms when people are in crisis; and, when appropriate, restoration of firearm rights. Mental health clinicians and trainees will especially appreciate the risk assessment strategies presented here, and mental health, public health, and public policy researchers will find Gun Violence and Mental Illness a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume that eschews sensationalism and embraces serious scholarship.

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

Suicide prevention initiatives are part of much broader systems connected to activities such as the diagnosis of mental illness, the recognition of clinical risk, improving access to care, and coordinating with a broad range of outside agencies and entities around both prevention and public health efforts. Yet suicide is also an intensely personal issue that continues to be surrounded by stigma. On September 11-12, 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop in Washington, DC, to discuss preventing suicide among people with serious mental illness. The workshop was designed to illustrate and discuss what is known, what is currently being done, and what needs to be done to identify and reduce suicide risk. Improving Care to Prevent Suicide Among People with Serious Mental Illness summarizes presentations and discussions of the workshop.