Crisis
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The firearms climate in Ireland is rapidly changing, and there is currently no research on the risk profiles of those dying through firearms suicides. ⋯ The findings have implications for awareness training for suicide prevention workers and for those concerned with Ireland's increasingly liberal firearms climate.
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Comparative Study
The attitudes of emergency staff toward attempted suicide patients: a comparative study before and after establishment of a psychiatric consultation service.
The staff in the emergency room of general hospitals are under heavy work pressure and seem to reveal negative attitudes toward suicide attempters. From earlier studies there is indirect evidence that the attitudes of staff who have the opportunity to consult a psychiatrist are less negative. ⋯ The results suggest that providing a psychiatric consultation service did not significantly affect attitudes among general hospital emergency room staff toward attempted suicide patients during its first year of operation, but in general, the emergency room staff was content with the opportunity for psychiatric consultation.
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Suicidal behavior is an understudied subject in Pakistan, a South-Asian developing country with a predominantly Muslim population. ⋯ Patients who left the ED without psychosocial assessment are at increased risk for repetition of DSH as well as suicide.
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Very high rates of suicide have been reported from India and the developing world. However, much of the debate on suicide prevention focuses on individuals, methods, site-specific solutions, or particular suicide prevention strategies. This article argues for population based approaches that focus on improving the general health of populations (e.g., macroeconomic policies that aim for social justice, schemes to meet basic human needs, organizing local support groups within vulnerable sections of society, developing and implementing an essential pesticide list, addressing gender issues, and increasing public awareness through the mass media) rather than medical, psychiatric, and other strategies that target individuals (e.g., treatment of mental illness, counseling, etc.) in order to reduce high suicide rates in India and developing countries. Individual approaches will help people in distress and prevent individuals from committing suicide, but will not reduce population suicide rates.