Suicide Prevention Strategies: From Legislation to Lethal Means Assessment

Abstract

We systematically assessed the presence and distribution of state-level policies related to training occupational groups in suicide prevention. Every state had at least one relevant policy and the 477 policies in our final set were distributed across five distinct occupational settings. We also conducted a retrospective cohort study and a case series among patients who were evaluated at a Psychiatric Emergency Service (PES). Based on documented suicidality and firearm access at patients’ most recent PES visit, we identified that 1) patients with any suicidality or unknown suicidality were more likely to die by suicide than those with no suicidality, 2) patients with documented access to firearms were more likely to die by firearm suicide than those with documentation that they had no firearm access, and 3) the proportion of firearm access was higher among firearm suicide decedents than suicide decedents who died by non-firearm means.