Health Policy Brief: Understanding Suicide Risk and Prevention
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- Suicide rates have been rising during the past several years, but suicide is preventable.
- There are many known risk factors for suicide, but the predictive utility of any single risk factor is low, requiring a focus on population-level rather than individual-level prevention.
- There are proven processes for identifying suicide risk and intervening in health care, criminal justice, and education settings.
- There is also a need for an enhanced data infrastructure to support suicide and self-harm surveillance systems.
- Additional policy intervention is needed to scale and spread successful prevention approaches and to identify others. For example, policies should support removal of lethal means, increased funding for help lines and school-based programs, and integration of mental health care into routine health care.
