193 - Suicide Prevention and COVID-19
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The pandemic has elevated many of the risk factors of suicide, including loneliness, grief, economic distress, and a record number of people requesting new access to firearms which are involved in 50% of suicides. Hopkins suicide prevention expert Dr. Holly Wilcox talks with Stephanie Desmon about these risks, what the data are showing so far, and potential solutions. They also discuss the particular risk of youth suicide and interventions.
KEYWORDS: community mental health; policy; violence prevention
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:18.8 | and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:21.9 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day |
| 0:27.3 | through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health |
| 0:32.7 | officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at |
| 0:39.8 | Public Health Question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast |
| 0:47.8 | episodes. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Holly Wilcox, a suicide prevention expert at Johns Hopkins, about the U.S. suicide rate, which is up 35% over the past 20 years. |
| 1:00.7 | They discuss how the pandemic has increased many of the risk factors for suicide, with loneliness and grief on the rise and a record number of people requesting new access to firearms, which are involved in |
| 1:11.9 | half of suicides. Let's listen. Holly Wilcox, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having |
| 1:19.6 | me, Stephanie. I appreciate it. So today we're going to talk about suicide, which I know you're an |
| 1:24.6 | expert in. And I want to talk about how the suicide rate has been rising in the United States. |
| 1:30.3 | Tell me about that. |
| 1:32.3 | So the suicide rate has increased when we look at data from around the year 2000 to present, |
| 1:38.3 | about 35% overall in the population, but there are some groups where you see more of an increase in other |
| 1:45.1 | subpopulations with less of an increase. Obviously a concerning trend. Definitely. What is behind it? |
| 1:51.8 | So I wish we knew. Suicide is a complex and multi-determined problem. So there's no easy answer |
| 1:59.0 | and no really direct solution. Things to keep in mind is that |
| 2:04.5 | suicide is really influenced by different health factors like depression, substance abuse, |
| 2:10.8 | serious mental illness, physical pain, people living with chronic pain, also environmental factors. Access to lethal means is one really |
| 2:20.8 | important target for prevention. Stressful life events and living in situations where there's low |
| 2:29.0 | taboo, community where there's low taboo against suicide, and also communities that have been experiencing |
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