In “Health & Science,” the Washington Post (3/26, Achenbach, Wan, Mettler) reports that 20 years ago, “about 29,000 people in the U.S. killed themselves, and by 2017 the toll had grown to more than 47,000.” Three recent high-profile suicides now “provide an opportunity to confront a national public health crisis as suicides become more common.” Investigators “who study suicide say the field is grossly underfunded,” and they also “say they have minimal understanding of who, exactly, is most at risk of suicide.” Commenting on two suicides among teen “survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting of 2018,” Jane Pearson, “a suicide researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health,” observed that the “Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students’” campaign “to end gun violence” was “an experience unique among mass shooting survivors, and the students operate amid great expectations and with many people watching them.”
Related Links:
— “Three tragic deaths reverberate across U.S. amid steady rise in suicides, “Achenbach, Wan, Mettler, The Washington Post, March 26, 2019