Suicide Prevention: Not A Bull's Eye But Please Don't Call it a Non-Winnable Battle

Opening Reception, 2013 IASP World Congress

When the Center for Disease Control released its strategy to target "Winnable Battles", Suicide  Prevention was conspicuously absent from the list.

Not that I was surprised: the definition of winnable, in the outlined strategy, was potentially easily or rapidly winnable, i.e., the so called colloquial "low hanging fruit".

However, since the strategy was not called "Low Hanging Fruit Battles", I bristled quite a bit at the idea that this publicized list of CDC "winnable battles" reinforces the idea of suicide prevention as an unrealistic goal, a pipe dream of sorts (since I'm on a colloquial roll).

There is every evidence that suicide prevention, while not easily or rapidly achievable, IS a very winnable battle, given appropriate resources and efforts.

At the World Congress of the International Association for Suicide Prevention this week, there is a remarkable convergence of presentations on country level suicide prevention strategies. All are multi-leveled.

It is true that wearing a seat belt or a helmet or a condom is (typically, not always when cultural factors get in the way) far more easily and/or rapidly achieved than (for example, outlining a good strategy): (i) Restricting access to suicide means; (ii) Successfully engaging media in ceasing nefarious suicide reporting behaviors; (iii) Decreasing the stigma of help seeking for depression and other mental illnesses especially for those who may need the most help like lonely taciturn men without social support; (iv) Training a safety network ranging from general practictioners to mental health professionals to engage in best practices for suicide risk assessment, depression care and suicide prevention at all the sites where vulnerable individuals do present waiving red flags which are currently all but too often ignored.

But all that, for example, is do-able and should be done: it is an eminently winnable battle.

Till Later,

Anne