The Problem
The United States suicide epidemic remains unnoticed and untreated, despite the accelerating rise in deaths. Next year, approximately 50,000 Americans will die by suicide, three times as many as homicide. After a brief decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, suicide rates resumed their relentless 25-year climb in 2021. More teenagers and young adults will die from suicide in 2023 than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined.
The suicidal mental state is arguably the most dangerous existing psychiatric condition, often leading to imminent death. Yet current psychiatric manuals do not even acknowledge suicidality as a distinct diagnosis. Instead, suicide is treated as a side effect of depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, illnesses in which, ironically, fatal outcomes overwhelmingly result from suicides. In fact, the current methods of predicting suicides are no better than chance.
Presently, when assessing suicidal patients to determine their level of risk, clinicians rely on patients’ self-report of their suicidality. Acutely aware of the inadequacy of this method, clinicians working with suicidal patients feel helpless and anxious due to the lack of reliable methods to assess risk and their liability for the suicides they were not able to prevent. As a result, distressed clinicians avoid engaging with suicidal patients. In turn, suicidal patients see the anxiety of clinicians as more evidence that there is no help for them, thus reinforcing their decision to take their own lives.
The Solution
We can prevent suicide deaths by radically shifting our view of suicide from that of a side effect of other mental disorders, to the diagnosis and treatment of the suicidal mental state - a distinct, acute, and often-fatal mental illness. We have called this illness the Suicide Crisis Syndrome, or SCS. Introducing SCS in diagnostic manuals and clinical training programs is critical if it is to be included in medical and professional health education and disseminated widely in clinical practice. Moreover, recognition of SCS as mental illness with its own diagnostic code on par with depression or panic disorder will enable insurance carriers to reimburse SCS assessments. As a result, all involved professionals and concerned laymen will be trained to recognize SCS as an illness. Just like a heart attack, the SCS need not be fatal. If SCS is caught and treated during the critical period prior to the suicidal act, suicide can be prevented.
Since its founding by Dr. Igor Galynker, the mission of the Mount Sinai Beth Israel Suicide Research Laboratory has been to diagnose and treat the suicidal mental state as a life-threatening illness. Researchers in the Galynker Laboratory conceived and identified SCS and then developed innovative tools for diagnosing it that do not rely on asking patients about their suicidal intent. The use of SCS assessment and treatment in the US and abroad has already prevented suicide in the highest-risk suicidal patients following their hospital discharge.
Today, SCS is under consideration for addition to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association Steering Committee. The Galynker Lab’s approach to suicide prevention is being taught and replicated in 19 foreign countries. As the United States suicide rates continue to rise, there is an urgent need to change our approach of assessing and identifying acute suicide risk. By training doctors in diagnosing and treating SCS we can save thousands of lives. We can diffuse this ticking time bomb and prevent suicide.
The Funding Needs
In order to have SCS universally accepted and implemented, the Galynker Lab needs funding to provide answers to two remaining real-life research questions:
1)Will wide implementation of SCS assessments prevent suicide deaths?
2)Will treatment of SCS with medications prevent suicide deaths?
Dr. Galynker has answered these questions positively in his clinical practice. The Galynker Laboratory now needs funds to confirm these answers with scientific evidence, as they have done previously for the identification and clinical utility of the SCS diagnosis.
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