People Contemplating Suicide Often Don’t Seek Help

A publication in the journal Psychiatric Services describes a study that supports the contention in my headline. It comes from Canada, and is based on data from the Canadian Community Health Survey Cycle 1.2.

More than 35,000 people over 15 years of age were surveyed. Among them, 1234 individuals had suicidal thoughts (ideation) in the last year, and 230 stated they had tried to commit suicide. In the whole collective of 36,872, there were 4,872 (13%) who had been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Individuals with suicidal ideation and who had attempted suicide were significantly more likely to seek help than those with other mental disorders. However, 48% of those with suicidal ideation and 24% of those who had attempted suicide did not seek help and hadn’t recognized their need for help in the previous year.

As the authors of the report state, research should be directed towards finding better ways of identifying those individuals at risk of suicide, and addressing barriers to their receiving appropriate care. To start with, there are known ways for friends and family members to identify possible suicide candidates, if they are aware. Sometimes potential suicides present to emergency departments after an overdose, or with symptoms of depression; these patients should be referred for psychiatric treatment, urgently.