NEW YORK, NY — The New York State Office of Mental Health today announced the release of an extensive, multifaceted plan for suicide prevention, aimed at reducing New York State’s suicide rate. To guide suicide prevention statewide 1,700 Too Many: New York State’s Suicide Prevention Plan, will empower communities, healthcare professionals, and researchers with the tools they need to decrease the number of deaths by suicide.
“New York State is taking action to save the lives of our family, friends, and neighbors from suicide, the most preventable cause of death,” said New York State Office of Mental Health Commissioner Dr. Ann Sullivan. “This plan presents the most extensive suicide prevention framework of any state in the nation, with lofty goals and detailed plans on how to make it happen. By working together under the common cause of suicide prevention, we will honor in the best way possible those whom we have lost to suicide, by letting potentially suicidal individuals know that we care about them and that help is always available.”
1,700 Too Many was developed after New York State was chosen to receive a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to integrate suicide prevention into healthcare settings and provide prevention specific training to healthcare providers. New York is one of only four states to receive such funding. The plan is the centerpiece of the inaugural New York State Suicide Prevention Conference occurring today and tomorrow in Albany.
“More and more New Yorkers are receiving their mental health services from primary care providers,” said New York State Office of Mental Health Suicide Prevention Office Director Dr. Jay Carruthers. “It is of utmost importance that we train our medical professionals to address suicide risk more directly. It’s one of the various components of our plan that will have a significant impact on reducing suicides in New York State.”
“The new state plan shows why New York State remains a leader in suicide prevention. To truly have an impact, no one intervention is enough,” said Suicide Prevention Center of New York Associate Director Garra Lloyd-Lester. “We need a coordinated systematic response, in our health system, in our schools and in our communities. And that’s exactly what the plan calls for.”
1,700 Too Many brings a three-tiered strategy to suicide prevention.
- Integrating Suicide Prevention into Health and Behavioral Health Settings
Many individuals who die by suicide have contact with the health care system just prior to death. Yet, health and behavioral health systems have never been explicitly designed to reduce suicide deaths. The plan will work to change this through the adoption of a systematic approach: The Zero Suicide Model. All healthcare settings – mental health and substance use treatment centers, emergency rooms, primary care practices, hospitals – have an important role to play in reducing suicide deaths among New Yorkers. A core component of the plan relies on improved training for clinicians in the identification and treatment of at-risk individuals. OMH is ramping up training in this area for mental health and substance abuse providers, with plans to expand to other healthcare and social service settings.
- Coordinated Community Suicide Prevention
Working together, communities can make a difference and prevent suicides. Research indicates that individuals who feel disconnected from others are at increased risk for suicide. The second strategy of the plan works to help at-risk individuals foster connections, encouraging them to remain integrated within their communities, throughout their lives. It calls for increasing efforts to intervene at the earliest signs of trouble, before an individual becomes suicidal. Research suggests that the promotion of mental wellness and supportive social connections can leave individuals less vulnerable to suicide, including those with little-to-no contact with health and behavioral healthcare systems. The plan also continues New York’s efforts to train the public in suicide prevention as well as develop, support and strengthen community suicide prevention coalitions and create ‘suicide safer’ school communities.
- Data-Informed Suicide Prevention
Suicide is a complex problem. The third overarching strategy of the plan makes an ongoing commitment to collect better data in order to continuously inform the State’s suicide prevention efforts. New York State is fortunate to have a number of resources that contain information relevant to suicide surveillance. This plan explicitly calls for leveraging existing data and developing novels ways to make the latest information more accessible to end users, such as policy makers, providers, and communities working towards suicide prevention. To that end, OMH is working more closely with other state agencies to make better use of new and existing suicide data.
Read the entire ‘1,700 Too Many’: New York State’s Suicide Prevention Plan, here: http://omh.ny.gov/omhweb/resources/publications/suicde-prevention-plan.pdf