On July 28, 1999, Tipper Gore and Surgeon General David Satcher hosted a press conference at which the Surgeon General unveiled a blueprint to prevent suicide in the United States. The document outlines more than a dozen steps that can be taken by individuals, communities, organizations and policymakers.

Every year, about 30,000 people die by suicide in the U.S., and some 650,000 receive emergency treatment after a suicide attempt. Often, those most at risk are the least able to access professional help. Reducing Suicide provides a blueprint for addressing this tragic and costly problem: how we can build an appropriate infrastructure, conduct needed research, and improve our ability to recognize suicide risk and effectively intervene. Rich in data, the book also strikes an intensely personal chord, featuring compelling quotes about people's experience with suicide. The book explores the factors that raise a person's risk of suicide: psychological and biological factors including substance abuse, the link between childhood trauma and later suicide, and the impact of family life, economic status, religion, and other social and cultural conditions. The authors review the effectiveness of existing interventions, including mental health practitioners' ability to assess suicide risk among patients. They present lessons learned from the Air Force suicide prevention program and other prevention initiatives. And they identify barriers to effective research and treatment. This new volume will be of special interest to policy makers, administrators, researchers, practitioners, and journalists working in the field of mental health.

What does it mean to be the nation's doctor? In this engaging narrative, journalist Mike Stobbe examines the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, underlining how it has always been an anomaly within the federal government with a unique ability to influence public health. But now Surgeon Generals compete with other high profile figures, like the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Furthermore, in an era of declining budgets, when public health departments eliminate tens of thousands of jobs, some argue that a lower-profile and ineffective surgeon general is a waste of money. Tracing stories of how surgeons general such as Luther Terry, C. Everett Koop, and Jocelyn Elders created policies and confronted controversy in response to issues like smoking, AIDS, and masturbation, Stobbe highlights how this office is key to shaping the nation's health and explains why its decline is harming our country's well-being.

"The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (National Strategy or NSSP) is designed to be a catalyst for social change with the power to transform attitudes, policies, and services. Representing the combined work of advocates, clinicians, researchers and survivors, the National Strategy lays out a framework for action and guides development of an array of services and programs yet to be set in motion. It strives to promote and provide direction to efforts to modify the social infrastructure in ways that will affect the most basic attitudes about suicide and its prevention, and that will also change judicial, educational, and health care systems."--Excerpt from book viewed on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov June 29, 2022.