Columbia University Medical Center
Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) have found that legislation reducing access to firearms has lowered firearm suicide rates in other countries. This finding is based on evidence from around the world on the relationship between firearm ownership and firearm suicide rates.
The report was published recently in the American
Journal of Psychiatry.
To reduce firearm suicide rates in the United States, the
authors recommended several measures, such as targeted legislation to limit
firearm access to individuals at risk for suicide, using smart gun technology,
offering public education on firearm suicide, and research to evaluate the
effectiveness of prevention methods.
According to the authors, half of suicide deaths involve a
firearm. In 2014, of the more than 33,500 firearm deaths in the United States,
over 21,000 were the result of suicide. About 38 percent of U.S. households own
at least one gun, making firearms widely available to those at risk of suicide.
Their findings and recommendations were based on a review of case-control, ecological, and time-series studies from the United States and other countries. The researchers extrapolated from gun control measures implemented elsewhere in considering what might be possible and effective in preventing firearm suicides in the U.S.
Studies in the U.S. showed, at both ecological and individual
levels, that greater firearm availability is associated with greater risk of
firearm suicide. Globally, four studies in other developed countries found that
per capita gun ownership correlates with national firearm suicide rates.
Over the three-year period from 2000 to 2002, the 15 states with
the highest household firearm ownership (47 percent) had almost twice as many
suicides (N=14,809) as the six states with the lowest firearm ownership (15
percent, N=8,052).
This difference in overall suicides is largely accounted for
by the difference in firearm suicides (9,749 compared with 2,606). Non-firearm
suicides (5,060 compared with 5,446) and the total populations of the two sets
of states were comparable.
While states vary widely in the stringency of their firearm
laws, recent studies are encouraging about the potential benefits of targeted
and multifaceted firearm restrictions, including purchasing permits, waiting
periods, safe storage, gun violence restraining orders, background checks, and
registration guidelines. All of these measures have been associated with lower
firearm suicide rates and lower overall suicide rates.
Smart gun technology, such as fingerprint recognition, limits
use of a gun to the owner and permitted users. Mandating that new guns use the
new technology and instituting trade-in programs to replace old guns with safer
ones can prevent a household's firearms from being used for suicide by family
members or others with access to the firearm.
Safe storage methods, keeping guns unloaded, methods of identifying
individuals at risk of suicide, and changing the belief that a suicide is
"inevitable" are among the public health messages that may help
reduce firearm suicide rates.
Social marketing initiatives to change public
perceptions--similar to the successful campaigns to prevent driving while
impaired, encourage seat belt use, and promote smoking cessation--may also
prove valuable in reducing firearm suicide rates.
"These findings illustrate the influence that social policy
can have on medical conditions, in this case suicide," noted Jeffrey
Lieberman, MD, chair of the department of psychiatry at CUMC and director of
NYSPI.
All methods to reduce firearm suicide rates require not only
implementation, but also monitoring and systematic evaluation of their effectiveness.
"Ultimately," said J. John Mann, MD, the Paul Janssen Professor of
Translational Neuroscience (in Psychiatry and in Radiology) at CUMC, director
of the Molecular Imaging and Neuropathy division at NYSPI, and senior author,
"such program evaluation and lifting the ban on federal funding of
research on firearm violence will help improve efforts to reduce firearm
suicide mortality."
