Medical Xpress September 30, 2024
After suicide care was integrated into routine primary care visits, researchers saw a 25% decrease in the rate of suicide attempts in the following 90 days, a new Kaiser Permanente study finds.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is the first to show that suicide risk screening in primary care, followed by safety planning, improved suicide prevention efforts in a health care setting. The trial took place at Kaiser Permanente clinics in Washington state, using data from January 2015 to July 2018.
“Our findings are important because we know many people seek primary care prior to fatal and nonfatal suicide attempts,” said Julie Angerhofer Richards, Ph.D., MPH, the lead author of the paper and a collaborative scientist...