Do Brief Preventive Interventions for Patients at Suicide Risk Work?

Suicide is the 10 leading cause of death in the United States and the 2 leading cause among youth and young adults, aged 10–34 years. There has been an alarmingly increased trend in suicide rates in the US over the past decades from 10.5 to 14.0 per 100,000 or a 33% increase between 1999 and 2017. Studies show that 91.7% of people who die by suicide had a health care contact with an emergency room visit, primary care, or outpatient specialty setting within a year prior to suicide, 54% within 30 days, and 29.6% within one week prior to suicide. Thus, the need for effective brief interventions that could be easily applied by a range of clinicians at each one of these settings to reduce risk for suicide is now more important than ever. We thank Doupnik and colleagues for their important contribution conducting a meta-analysis on studies addressing brief preventive interventions for acute suicide risk. The results provide valuable information for clinicians, researchers, and health policy makers about whether these interventions work in order to determine if these strategies should be implemented to reduce the public health burden of suicidal behavior.