We can't talk about it

An article entitled Our Young People Kill Themselves And We Can’t Say It Out Loud turned up recently on a NZ blog site called Military Models. The author's name isn't obvious from the site, and I suspect this blog post is a bit of an unusual one for them. 

The writer's main point is that the current Government policy doesn't allow suicides to be written about or reported at the time they happen, and while there is a move to change this policy it's not happening fast enough for many.  I note on Twitter that there's been a good deal of discussion about this recently, initiated to a great extent by SPINZ (Suicide Prevention Information New Zealand).

One of the comments relating to the article says:
What hits me most about this is not the hypocrit [sic] way of the officials, it is the fact that so many kids apparently cannot stand their life and go to this extreme. What is wrong in your country?
Apparently we have a very wrong concept of New Zealand here in Europe where for many it is a very desirable place to be. Maybe that is Peter Jackson´s fault…
There is a lot of pressure on kids everywhere in the western world today, but this sounds alarming.
Start by calling things by their name,but then go and find the root of this disease.

We know some of the issues - a lack of a spiritual base is one of them - but there is a good deal of work to be done to reduce the horrendous toll suicide takes on the lives of young people.

 

SPINZ Symposium

At the SPINZ National Symposium 2009, the following paper will be presented: Emergency department re-presentations following intentional self-harm by Silke Kuehl and Dr Kathy Nelson.

The abstract is as follows:
A retrospective observational design was selected for a period of one year and data was collected from electronic clinical case notes. The sample consisted of 48 people with 73 presentations and re-presentations.

This study made several discoveries:
many re-presentations (55%) occurred within one day;
the exact number of people who re-presented many times to ED is unknown, but is far higher than reported in other studies;
fewer support people were present for the second presentation;
the documentation of triage and assessments by ED staff was often minimal, though frequently portrayed immense distress of this population;
cultural input for Maori was missing;
physical health complaints and psychosis were found with some intentional self-harm presentations; challenging behaviours occurred in at least a quarter of presentations;
the medical and mental health inpatient admission rates were approximately 40% higher for second presentations.

Recommendations in regard to the use of a triage assessment tool, cultural input for Maori and the need for a mental health consultation liaison nurse in ED will be made. Staff education, collaboration between services with consumer involvement and further research of this group are required.

Further to this, the link above goes to the list of talks to be given at this Symposium. There are a number of culturally-concerned topics, both Maori and Pasifika, as well as some basics regarding suicide prevention. Anyone with a concern for people tending towards suicide should try and make time to attend.

The NZ Tui (in the photo) is used as a kind of logo on the SPINZ site - photo by 'North of Auckland'

Suicide and Recession

In an article in the latest SPINZ (Suicide Prevention Information NZ) newsletter, Dr Sunny Collings writes:

Recent articles in the media have suggested that the recession is having an impact on suicide rates. For example, in the UK a death by suicide was reported as being the ‘first suicide due to the economic downturn’. Irrespective of the details of the individual case, this claim is an oversimplification. The causes of suicide are complex and both individual level factors and societal/cultural factors are important.

Suicide rates rose in New Zealand during the Great Depression with a peak in 1930. The international rise in suicide rates during the Depression was probably due to the rise in unemployment. Evidence of a link between unemployment and suicide has been shown in New Zealand, with an odds ratio of about 2.5, meaning that people who are unemployed are more likely to complete suicide.

However, mental disorder was estimated as accounting for about half of the increased risk.

Dr Collings discusses the connections - or lack of them - further in the article, which is available online. Basically, unemployment - particularly for men - can add hugely to stress in a person's life, but it's usually only when it's added to an existing state of unwellness that the risk of suicide increases.