Aye aye, check shirt man’s back, still with his hand surgically grafted onto his head, still staring out of the window at the black night sky for the answers to it all. However, this time, he’s appearing next to a good news story about a drop in the number of deaths from suicide.
The report shows a 7.5% drop in suicides among young men aged 20-34 between 2003-05 and 2004-06.
There were 145 suicides among mental health in-patients in 2005 compared with 157 in 2004.
The number of suicides among people in contact with mental health services also dropped, from 1,308 in 2004 to 1,277 in 2005.
Suicide rates in prison have risen, but the general thrust of the report is positive. Well done to all those whose hard work has contributed to saving these lives.
Err…, don’t want to piss on anyone’s parade, but 3 mental patients a week, kill themselves in hospital!? And anyway, the figures give a modest reduction [12] on a [relatively] small number over one year only, so it may be a random variation and statistically insignificant. As for the 2.4% reduction in dead out-patients, the same thing applies, but even more so. I haven’t taken your biscuits away, but I have put a cabbage leaf in the tin so your Garibaldi’s go limp.
3 mental patients a week? Shouldn’t that read one every three weeks? (145 suicides over 365 days)
1 suicide every 3 weeks would be 52/3 = 17 per year.365days/145suicides=2.5days per suicide. i.e. c. 3 per week You’ll need to double check that with someone with an O level in maths. My degree only taught me how to deal with the numerical analysis of relatively ill-conditioned high-order partial differential equations. [A lot easier than dealing with a depressed, pot-smoking, spikey-haired, emo kid holding a razor blade]
Ah yes. You’re right. I’m wrong. With maths abilities like that, it’s probably a bloody good thing I’m not doing any drug calculations in my current job.
Alas I must also piddle on the parade a little – but not in the same vein. Any suicide prevention work that works is good work – well almost any.
But I was interested in this report – so I took a peek at BBC linked page – where it references NIMH report – So I checked out NIMH and all I found was a report on how insensitive media reporting is on suicide (which was what the opening part of the article addressed – then went into statistics etc from what seemed to be an older report – not a new one. Please feel free to correct me if anyone finds it.)
It appears the BBC has done it’s duty to report how bad reporting suicide is in the media and mushed it in with a lot of other stats and ‘feel good’ stuff.
I’d agree tho with Socrates; depiste reductions being a good positive ‘general thrust’ – it seems more of a drift than a thrust with suicide rates of 3 per week IN hospital?
Also note – check shirt man is the same bloody picture. You think someone might think to move him away from the window eh?
While it is good news that suicide appears to occurred have less frequently I still think we need to keep the following proviso’s in mind:
*prediciting who will, or will not commit suicide is notoriously difficult.
*no study has ever demonstrated any reliable intervention for suicide prevention.
*the number of people who deliberately kill themselves is ALWAYS higher than the official figure because unequivocal intent must be present before a coroner can return a suicide verdict.
If fewer people really are committing suicide then it begs the question, why ?
And if there is any meaningful new knowledge emerging, how can we generalise this data to assist others who may be at risk ?
[...] on from the news that people with mental health problems are now less likely to kill themselves, it now transpires that they’re also less likely to kill other people [...]