Suicide rates among mental health patients drop considerably when prevention strategies are implemented but stay steady when they are not, a UK study said to be of “tremendous significance” to Australia shows.
An analysis of suicides in a UK patient population of almost 13, 000 over the decade to 2006 found that as more suicide prevention recommendations were implemented suicide rates declined.
The results might have sounded obvious, said Doctors Yeates Conwell and Carole Farley-Toombs from the University of Rochester Medical Centre in an accompanying editorial in the Lancet, but the success of current intervention strategies often “go unseen and, therefore, unfunded.”
“[The authors] do a great service to mental health systems, their providers, and patients by lending strong support to...
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