U.S. youth suicide prevention saved nearly 900 lives

WASHINGTON – A U.S. grant program that was started in 2004 to fund youth suicide prevention efforts throughout the country was linked with nearly 900 youth suicide deaths prevented by 2015, according to a matched, case-control analysis.

^{Mitchel L. Zoler/MDedge News}

Lucas Godoy Garraza

U.S. counties with a youth suicide prevention effort funded by a grant from the federal Garrett Lee Smith (GLS) Memorial Suicide Prevention program had an average 1.09 fewer youth suicide deaths per 100,000 youths (10-24 years old) 2 years after ongoing funding began, when compared with matched U.S. counties without a GLS-funded program, said Mr. Garraza, an analyst with ICF International in New York. Counties that had GLS-funded programs operating for 3 years showed an average reduction in youth suicide death of roughly 2 fewer deaths per 100,000 population, compared with control counties, and counties with programs in operation for 4 years showed a reduction of roughly 3 fewer deaths per 100,000 population.

“These extremely important data show convincingly that if we want to save lives, suicide prevention can’t be a one-and-done. The longer the sustained effort, the more significant the impact; if the effort lasts for just 1 or 2 years the impact is lower,” said Richard McKeon, PhD, chief of the Suicide Prevention Branch of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the U.S. agency that administers the GLS grant program and commissioned ICF International to analyze the grant program’s effects.

^{Mitchel L. Zoler/MDedge News}

Dr. Richard McKeon

As of October 2017, the GLS grant initiative had made nearly 200 awards to youth suicide prevention programs that operated in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, one territory, and among 49 Native American tribes, Mr. Garraza said.

To assess the effects of the GLS grants on suicide death rates in people aged 10-24 years, Mr. Garraza and his associates used U.S. suicide data collected in 2,095 counties throughout the country that each had more than 3,000 resident youths, including 1,126 counties that had, as of 2015, been exposed to at least 1 year of a program sponsored by a GLS grant that began before 2010 and 969 counties without any GLS-grant exposure. After the counties in each subgroup were propensity-score matched using several criteria, including numbers of youth by specific age, race, household income, employment rates, health insurance status, and urbanization, the researchers analyzed suicide death rates in 481 counties with 1-4 years of exposure of a GLS-funded prevention program and in 851 counties with no exposure.