Suicide Prevention Awareness Month - Week 4
9/24/2024 10:44:00 AM - Behavioral Health

Everyone deserves access to quality mental healthcare, and cultural sensitivity is key to effective mental health support. Let's celebrate diversity and provide culturally competent care for all. Together, we can create a more supportive and inclusive community. Love and acceptance can save lives. samhsa.gov/suicide

Learn more about Risk and Protective Factors for suicide: https://sprc.org/risk-and-protective-factors/

Help for You

Talking with someone about your thoughts and feelings can save your life. There are steps you can take to keep  yourself safe through a crisis. Call or text 988 anytime or chat online with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: https://988lifeline.org/

You can also visit FindSupport.gov to get support and find resources on:

• Finding low or no-cost support
• Asking for help
• Preparing for treatment

Help for Someone You Know

If you believe someone may be in danger of suicide:

• Call 911, if danger for self-harm seems imminent.
• Call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to talk to a caring professional.
• Ask them if they are thinking about killing themselves. This will not put the idea into their head or make it more likely that they will attempt suicide.
• Listen without judging and show you care.
• Stay with the person or make sure the person is in a private, secure place with another caring person until you can get further help.
• Remove any objects that could be used in a suicide attempt.

National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (NSSP) 2024

The 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (NSSP) is a commitment to care, connect, and collaborate, and it includes objectives related to improving suicide-related data and research. Visit hhs.gov/nssp for more information on how you can advance this national call to action.

Key areas of focus in the National Strategy:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
• Healthy Equity
• Intersection of suicide and substance use
• Youth and social media
• Lethal means safety

The 2024 NSSP is meant to address gaps in the Suicide Prevention Field and promote a coordinated and comprehensive approach through four strategic directions:

1. Community Based Suicide Prevention
1. Goal 1: Establish effective, broad-based, collaborative, and sustainable suicide prevention partnerships.
2. Goal 2: Support upstream comprehensive community-based suicide prevention.
3. Goal 3: Reduce access to lethal means among people at risk of suicide.
4. Goal 4: Conduct postvention and support people with suicide-centered lived experience.
5. Goal 5: Integrate suicide prevention into the culture of the workplace and into other community settings.
6. Goal 6: Build and sustain suicide prevention infrastructure at the state, tribal, local, and territorial levels.
7. Goal 7: Implement research-informed suicide prevention communication activities in diverse populations using best practices from communication science.
2. Treatment and Crisis Services
1. Goal 8: Implement effective suicide prevention services as a core component of health care.
2. Goal 9: Improve the quality and accessibility of crisis care services across all communities.
3. Surveillance, Quality Improvement, and Research
1. Goal 10: Improve the quality, timeliness, scope, usefulness, and accessibility of data needed for suicide-related surveillance, research, evaluation, and quality improvement.
2. Goal 11: Promote and support research on suicide prevention.
4. Health Equity in Suicide Prevention
1. Goal 12: Embed health equity into all comprehensive suicide prevention activities.
2. Goal 13: Implement comprehensive suicide prevention strategies for populations disproportionately affected by suicide, with a focus on historically marginalized communities, persons with suicide-centered lived experience, and youth.
3. Goal 14: Create an equitable and diverse suicide prevention workforce that is equipped and supported to address the needs of the communities they serve.
4. Goal 15: Improve and expand effective suicide prevention programs for populations disproportionately impacted by suicide across the life span through improved data, research, and evaluation.