NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION

At a Glance - Suicide Prevention in the United States

• Since the 1960's the Federal Government has played an active role in suicide prevention with the establishment of a special suicide unit at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Later, in response to the escalation of suicide in younger age groups, a four volume Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide was produced in January 1989.
  
  
• The World Health Organization and the United Nations published a document in 1996, Prevention of Suicide: Guidelines for the Formulation and Implementation of National Strategies. This document helped mobilized action through a public-private partnership in the pursuit of a national strategy for the United States. The public agencies involved are within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), specifically the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes Health, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS). The private sector included the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network (SPAN), survivors of family members and friends who died by suicide, suicide attempt survivors, community activists, pharmaceutical manufacturers, health and mental health clinicians.
  
  
• This collaborative effort resulted in a jointly sponsored national conference on suicide prevention convened in Reno, Nevada, in October 1998, attended by researchers, clinicians, policy makers and suicide survivors. Each state was represented by a delegation at the meeting. After a careful review of all aspects of suicide, the participants relied on a public health model emphasizing suicide prevention. A National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (NSSP) was determined to be an essential step in any national suicide prevention effort.
  
  
• Participants at the Reno conference worked in regional, multidisciplinary groups to propose recommendations for the strategy. The initial recommendations were organized, by an expert panel into a compact set of 81 mixed goals, objectives and recommended activities to prevent suicide.
  
  
• Soon after, in July 1999, under the guidance of the Surgeon General, the Call to Action to Prevent Suicide was produced. This Surgeon General's report introduced a blueprint for addressing suicide: Awareness, Intervention, and Methodology, or AIM. AIM includes 15 key recommendations; a primary selection criterion was evidence for effectiveness as part of a public health approach to suicide prevention. These 15 recommendations were consolidated from overlapping fragments of the highest-ranked of the 81 recommendations produced through the Reno work. This consolidation was designed to generate a thematically coherent document that would lend itself easily to widespread dissemination and implementation.
  
  
• The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention Federal Steering Group, after careful review and deliberation of the Reno products, embarked on developing a comprehensive plan that would outline national goals and objectives with activities, defined for local, State, tribal, and Federal/national levels.
  
  
• A meeting of selected experts in consultation with the DHHS Steering Group was held in March 2000 in Baltimore, Maryland to refine the focus of the goals and objectives. A comprehensive plan to move the Nation forward in its response to the Call to Action was formulated.
  
  
• Four public hearings were held across the country in 2000 to gather broad input from knowledgeable and experienced people in the area of suicide prevention. A web page was set up to solicit comments from a national audience.
  
  
• "We must act now. We cannot change the past, but together we can shape a different future." So wrote Dr. David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., Surgeon General in the Call to Action to Prevent Suicide. The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: Goals and Objectives for Action will help shape that different future.