Mental health articles

suicidal ideation assessment The American College Health Association (ACHA) conducted the Spring 2000
National College Health Assessment (NCHA), which, along with other health indicators,
measured depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts among 15,977
college students on 28 campuses (ACHA, 2001). Its fi ndings were comparable to
the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey (NCHRBS) conducted by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1995: 9.5% had seriously
considered suicide within the past school year (Kisch, Leino, & Silverman, 2005).
They repeated the study in 2004 and found that 10.1% had seriously considered
suicide at least once during the past school year (Silverman, 2005b).

Meanwhile, the National Comorbidity Study found that in the general
population aged 18–54, the lifetime prevalence of ideation was 13.5% (Kessler,
Borges, & Walters, 1999). This rather startling number might make it appear
that suicidal ideation is “normative” and not necessarily indicative of more
serious underlying psychological or emotional disturbance, and one might be
tempted to dismiss ideation as a true harbinger of future problems, inasmuch
as only approximately 1.3% of deaths in the general U.S. population are due
to suicide. I would strongly caution against such reassuring conclusions, however,
since the majority of individuals who engage in self-destructive behaviors
report prior suicidal ideation, and suicidal ideation may be a precursor to
future suicidal planning and attempts (Kessler et al., 1999).

Tags: suicide