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Showing posts with label Access to Firearms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Access to Firearms. Show all posts

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Preventing Suicide Through Better Firearm Safety Policy in the United States

J. W. Swanson
Psychiatric Services
Volume 72, Issue 2
February 01, 2021, 174-179

Abstract

The U.S. suicide rate continues to increase, despite federal investment in developing preventive behavioral health care interventions. Important determinants of suicide—social, economic, and circumstantial—have little or no connection to psychopathology. Firearm injuries account for over half of suicides, and firearm access is perhaps the most important modifiable determinant. Thus gun safety policy deserves special attention as a pathway to suicide prevention. This article summarizes arguments for several recommended statutory modifications to firearm restrictions at the state level. The policy challenge is to develop and implement evidence-based strategies to keep guns out of the hands of people at highest risk of suicide, without unduly infringing the rights of a large number of gun owners who are unlikely to harm anyone. Recommendations for states include expansion and refinement of legal criteria prohibiting firearm purchase, possession, or access to better align with suicide risk, including prohibition for persons with brief involuntary psychiatric holds or repeated alcohol-impaired driving convictions; enactment of extreme risk protection order laws, which allow temporary removal of firearms from persons who are behaving dangerously, and entering purchase prohibition data for these persons in the FBI’s background-check database; and adoption of an innovative policy known as precommitment against suicide as well as voluntary self-enrollment in the FBI’s background-check database.

Highlights
  • Suicide is caused by many factors in addition to mental illness and often cannot be prevented by mental health treatment alone.
  • Access to firearms is one of the most important modifiable determinants of suicide mortality in the United States.
  • Evidence-based firearm restrictions and policies that limit gun access to people who pose a clear risk of intentional self-harm could prevent many suicides without infringing the rights of lawful gun owners.
Important data points

Overall, 60% of males who died by suicide had no known mental health conditions. Across all age groups, firearm suicides were more common among males without known mental health conditions compared with males who had known mental health conditions. Between 32% and 40% of all young and middle-aged adults in the study had a history of problematic substance use. Between 43% and 48% of all young and middle-aged adults tested positive for alcohol at the time of their death.

Monday, March 11, 2019

The Parking Lot Suicide

Emily Wax-Thibodeaux.
The Washington Post
Originally published February 11, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Miller was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts when he checked into the Minneapolis Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in February 2018. After spending four days in the mental-health unit, Miller walked to his truck in VA’s parking lot and shot himself in the very place he went to find help.

“The fact that my brother, Justin, never left the VA parking lot — it’s infuriating,” said Harrington, 37. “He did the right thing; he went in for help. I just can’t get my head around it.”

A federal investigation into Miller’s death found that the Minneapolis VA made multiple errors: not scheduling a follow-up appointment, failing to communicate with his family about the treatment plan and inadequately assessing his access to firearms.

Several days after his death, Miller’s parents received a package from the Department of Veterans Affairs — bottles of antidepressants and sleep aids prescribed to Miller.

His death is among 19 suicides that occurred on VA campuses from October 2017 to November 2018, seven of them in parking lots, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

While studies show that every suicide is highly complex — influenced by genetics, financial uncertainty, relationship loss and other factors — mental-health experts worry that veterans taking their lives on VA property has become a desperate form of protest against a system that some veterans feel hasn’t helped them.

The most recent parking lot suicide occurred weeks before Christmas in St. Petersburg, Fla. Marine Col. Jim Turner, 55, dressed in his uniform blues and medals, sat on top of his military and VA records and killed himself with a rifle outside the Bay Pines Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I bet if you look at the 22 suicides a day you will see VA screwed up in 90%,” Turner wrote in a note investigators found near his body.

The info is here.

Friday, September 14, 2018

Law, Ethics, and Conversations between Physicians and Patients about Firearms in the Home

Alexander D. McCourt, and Jon S. Vernick
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(1):69-76.

Abstract

Firearms in the home pose a risk to household members, including homicide, suicide, and unintentional deaths. Medical societies urge clinicians to counsel patients about those risks as part of sound medical practice. Depending on the circumstances, clinicians might recommend safe firearm storage, temporary removal of the firearm from the home, or other measures. Certain state firearm laws, however, might present legal and ethical challenges for physicians who counsel patients about guns in the home. Specifically, we discuss state background check laws for gun transfers, safe gun storage laws, and laws forbidding physicians from engaging in certain firearm-related conversations with their patients. Medical professionals should be aware of these and other state gun laws but should offer anticipatory guidance when clinically appropriate.

The info is here.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Childhood Firearm Injuries in the United States

Katherine A. Fowler, Linda L. Dahlberg, Tadesse Haileyesus, Carmen Gutierrez, Sarah Bacon
Pediatrics
July 2017, VOLUME 140 / ISSUE 1

RESULTS: Nearly 1300 children die and 5790 are treated for gunshot wounds each year. Boys, older children, and minorities are disproportionately affected. Although unintentional firearm deaths among children declined from 2002 to 2014 and firearm homicides declined from 2007 to 2014, firearm suicides decreased between 2002 and 2007 and then showed a significant upward trend from 2007 to 2014. Rates of firearm homicide among children are higher in many Southern states and parts of the Midwest relative to other parts of the country. Firearm suicides are more dispersed across the United States with some of the highest rates occurring in Western states. Firearm homicides of younger children often occurred in multivictim events and involved intimate partner or family conflict; older children more often died in the context of crime and violence. Firearm suicides were often precipitated by situational and relationship problems. The shooter playing with a gun was the most common circumstance surrounding unintentional firearm deaths of both younger and older children.


CONCLUSIONS: Firearm injuries are an important public health problem, contributing substantially to premature death and disability of children. Understanding their nature and impact is a first step toward prevention.

The article is here.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Families of Violent Patients: 'We're Locked Out' of Care

By Gary Fields
The Wall Street Journal
Originally published on June 7, 2013

Suzanne Lankford for seven years has tried and failed to get long-term mental-health care for her son. When she hears news of a gun rampage or other violence, she gets chills.

"Whenever I see the parents saying they tried to get help, I think, 'That could be me,' " she says.

Ms. Lankford has watched her son, Joshua Rockwell, today 28 years old, barricade himself inside a room to ward off imaginary assassins. He once knocked her out with a blow to the head. She called the police on him after recognizing him in a mall security video of an armed robbery. Charges are pending.

He was later charged with attacking and harassing a nurse and law-enforcement officer. That trial has been delayed several times.

After Ms. Lankford's punch to the head, she asked her son's doctors about his treatment. She received a standard answer: Privacy laws prevent his doctors from talking to her without his permission, because he is an adult. His lawyer declined to comment citing the pending charges. Mr. Rockwell, who is in custody, declined to comment through his mother under the advice of his attorney.

When America began dismantling its government-run mental institutions a half-century ago, the U.S. started creating privacy protections and made it tougher to forcibly hospitalize people. The goal was to allow the mentally ill to live something close to a regular life.

Today, after a series of high-profile shooting rampages, many with links to mental illness, the U.S. is re-examining this approach. Some of the loudest voices for overhaul are from the families of the mentally ill—a first line of defense.

"We have been asking for information on Josh's medications, on his treatment plan…so that we can help him meet those obligations, but we're locked out," Ms. Lankford says. "I don't know how this story ends."

The entire story is here.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

One Fifth Of Suicidal Teens Have Access To Guns At Home

By Joseph Nordqvist
Medical News Today
Originally published May 6, 2013

Around twenty percent of adolescents in the U.S. who are considered "suicidal" have guns in their homes, according to a recent study published at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.

In addition, the researchers revealed that 15 percent of those at risk of suicide know how to use the guns and the ammunition and have access to both.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, among young people between the ages of 10 and 24, suicide is the second leading cause of death.

Around half of teenage suicides are carried out using a firearm.

Suicide is a serious public health issue worldwide. It is the most prevalent cause of death in female teenagers and the second most common among male teenagers after road traffic accidents. Official estimates reveal that suicide causes close to 164,000 deaths every year.

The researchers carried out the study to create and develop a new tool for doctors to use which can help identify teenagers and young adults who require some form of intervention to prevent them from harming themselves. They asked the youths about their access to firearms as well as ammunition.

The entire story is here.

Friday, March 22, 2013

8th grade student commits suicide in school

WXYZ.com Action News
Originally published March 21, 2013

Southgate Community Schools superintendent Bill Grusecki says an eighth grade student committed suicide Thursday morning at Davidson Middle School.

Police say the boy was found in a restroom before classes began at about 8:15 a.m. Another student discovered the boy and alerted a teacher. Staff members immediately stepped in and called police.

The boy was transported to a hospital where he died.

The student died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Police say he had a .40-caliber handgun. Police are not releasing the boy's name until family has had time to notify all relatives.

Then entire tragic story is here.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Pa. sends mental health data for gun checks

By Moriah Balingit / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Originally published January 19, 2013

After facing legal and technical challenges for more than two years, the Pennsylvania State Police this week began transmitting hundreds of thousands of mental health records to a federal database used to conduct background checks for potential gun buyers.

On Tuesday, 643,167 mental health records were sent to the FBI-run National Instant Check System (NICS), according to the state police. The records represent people who are prohibited from buying guns because of involuntary mental health commitments.

"It's been an objective of ours for close to two years, so I think it's an important accomplishment that these records were able to be uploaded to NICS," said Lt. Col. Scott Snyder, deputy commissioner for the state police. The state police are working to fix a program that will upload the records automatically as they're created.

Strengthening the national database and universal background checks have been pillars of President Barack Obama's gun control agenda. On Wednesday, when he unfurled a massive gun control package, some executive orders were intended to make it easier for states to transmit mental health records to NICS.

Despite the state's achieving that goal, a disagreement between the state police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over interpretation of federal gun law throws into question how the records will be used. At issue is the 302, the shortest and most common type of involuntary mental health commitment.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for the ATF said the bureau was still reviewing whether a 302 should preclude someone under federal law from buying a gun.

The entire story is here.