Experts call for a four-step global suicide research and prevention roadmap

Release date: 2014-05-29

What is urgently needed is a road map for systematic research on suicidal behavioral mechanisms and is independent of any related diseases. Only in this way can a fact-based prevention programme be established.

Image source: Richard Wilkinson

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 1 million people worldwide commit suicide each year. This is more than the sum of the number of people killed and killed in the war. In addition, 10 million to 20 million people tried to commit suicide.

Suicide is one of the top three causes of death among people in the most productive age group (15 to 44 years old). Since the economic crisis caused by the collapse of the banking industry in 2008, the global suicide rate has risen. For example, from 2008 to 2012, the number of suicides in the Netherlands increased by 30% per year, from 1,353 to 1,753. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average social cost of suicide in the United States is $1.06 million.

Research lag

Although suicide has a huge social impact, there has been no progress in scientific understanding or treatment of suicidal behavior. It is known that up to 90% of suicidal behavior occurs in people who are clinically diagnosed with mental illness. Large epidemiological studies have shown that mental disorders, especially depression and alcohol addiction, are major risk factors. There is solid evidence that proper prevention and treatment of these diseases can reduce suicide rates.

However, psychiatry has long ignored this topic. In addition to being a symptom of borderline personality disorder and mood disorder, suicide, attempted suicide, and suicide were not included in the Fourth Edition of Mental Disorders Diagnostics and Statistics (DSM-4). The DSM-5 published last year did not include suicidal behavior in primary care. Suicide is seen as a medical complication rather than an obstacle.

Of the six suicide studies published in the two highest-level comprehensive psychiatric journals (American Psychiatry and Psychiatry) over the past five years, six of them involved schizophrenia – a quarter of suicide The behavior is related to it. Moreover, compared with the study of schizophrenia, most studies on suicidal behavior focus on its prevalence, rather than investigating the underlying mechanisms.

Andre Aleman, a cognitive neuropsychologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and Damian Denys, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Amsterdam, believe that the lack of suicide research may be due to the following factors. The first is cultural taboos. People hesitate to talk about suicide by a family member or friend, and many religions believe that suicide is disgraceful or even illegal. For example, in India and Singapore, attempted suicide will be punishable by imprisonment for up to one year; in some states of the United States, suicide is still considered an unwritten “common law” crime; assisting suicide is illegal in many countries.

Second, the causes of suicide are complex, including mental health, economic, social, cultural, and ethical issues.

Third, if there is a difference between the causes of non-fatal suicide attempts and fatal suicides, then suicidal behavior is difficult to study.

What is urgently needed is a road map for systematic research on suicidal behavioral mechanisms and is independent of any related diseases. Only in this way can a fact-based prevention programme be established. Aleman and Denys believe that this requires four steps.

Four-step plan

First, define suicide as a unique disease. The treatment of mental illness is usually associated with suicide, such as depression, but it does not prevent suicidal behavior in most people. Although suicide involves different medical and psychological fields, it should be classified under psychiatry, and psychiatry in the middle of consciousness and the brain can be fully evaluated. Psychiatry should assume responsibility for fully defining suicide, incorporate it into the classification system, develop rating scales to predict and assess severity, and test the choice of treatment options. This will make suicide a mental illness.

Second, understand the suicide mechanism. The roots of suicide in psychology and neurobiology come from the difficulty of emotional regulation and the breakdown of potential brain circuits. The most important psychological factors are anxiety, impulsive control, and increased aggression. In addition, people who exhibit suicidal behavior tend to suppress their feelings and find it difficult to determine their feelings. Associated with suicide is despair, dissatisfaction with society, and a decline in the ability to imagine a positive future. There may be several possible routes for suicidal behavior.

Suicidal behavior research should focus on individual differences in emotional cognitive control. Some people may have a strong emotional response to challenging events such as losing their jobs. Some may lack cognitive flexibility and coping skills in the face of adversity, and some may show an impulsive attack tendency. The widely accepted emotional response role model and the lack of cognitive control in the stage of suicidal behavior require a rigorous investigation to establish.

An example of a more needed type of research is the study conducted by the team of psychiatrists Scott Matthews of the VA San Diego Medical System in California. They compared the brain activity of post-war veterans who were considered to have a risk of suicide and no risk of suicide. Both groups of veterans have similar levels of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Members of the suicide group showed strong anterior cingulate gyrus and prefrontal cortical responses after making mistakes in the task of training attention. These brain regions are involved in cognitive control and behavioral testing. The authors speculate that the extra work the brain uses to deal with errors during self-monitoring may represent a weaker ability to cope with stress. This requires investigating in a larger sample size and taking into account different emotional states.

Third, fund suicide research. Governments and funding agencies should invest more in this topic. The Horizon 2020 EU Research and Innovation Framework Program should include the challenge of suicide research, the most urgent of which is the effective standard definition of suicide as a mental disorder and emotional regulation loop abnormality. The National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has filed an application for the development of screening for adolescents at risk of suicide, although larger and more comprehensive programs are necessary.

Promising in this regard is the Institute's research field standards program, which funds the development of a classification of psychopathology based on observed behavior and neurobiological outcomes. For example, symptoms of apathy often occur in mental and neurological diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Because the mechanisms that lead to indifference may be the same as the mechanisms that lead to these mental disorders. Indifference is increasingly being studied as a unique syndrome regardless of whether the patient has other symptoms of mental or neurological disease. Because suicide is a risk of various mental illnesses, including neurobiology and sociology, it applies to this project.

Fourth, promote prevention. The government should invest the same amount of money in suicide prevention as it does to reduce fatal traffic accidents. From 2008 to 2009, the UK’s spending on road safety awareness, including TV commercials, exceeded £19 million ($32 million); in contrast, funding for suicide research in the three years was $1.5 million. In the past few decades, the number of fatal traffic accidents has steadily declined, while the suicide rate has stabilized and even increased. The awareness and prevention of suicide was highlighted in a comment published earlier this year. The review said that investment in some mental health promotion and disease prevention intervention projects has declined.

Epidemiological studies point to risk factors that lead to suicide, which helps to develop a prevention-oriented approach. Significant risk factors include psychological barriers, past suicide attempts, anxiety, a combination of aggressive and impulsive, family suicide history, and life stress events such as unemployment and divorce. Comprehensive prevention plans should use the highest level of knowledge.

A good prevention program will improve the awareness and mental health of the general population to improve people's awareness of warning signs. Better education is also important to general practitioners because many people with suicidal thoughts will contact their general practitioner a few weeks before committing suicide. Prevention programs provide simple and clear access points to help behavior and provide monitoring services for those at risk of suicide. Governments and other actors must “de-stain” these items – “stigma” is a major obstacle to suicide prevention.

Aleman and Denys said public health authorities, clinicians and scientists clearly need to coordinate their work to understand and prevent suicide. Researchers should use neurobiology and neuroimaging techniques to discover relevant brain mechanisms. Clinicians must treat suicidal behavior as a separate treatment target. The Australian National Mental Health Council said: "We can and must do better."

Source: Chinese Journal of Science

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