The DOI matches its Crossref record; 64 of the 66 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Reducing a Suicidal Person’s Access to Lethal Means of Suicide
Open accessAbstract
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%-50% in other countries. The theory and evidence underlying means restriction is outlined. Most evidence of its efficacy comes from population-level interventions and natural experiments. In the U.S., where 51% of suicides are completed with firearms and household firearm ownership is common and likely to remain so, reducing a suicidal person's access to firearms will usually be accomplished not by fiat or other legislative initiative but rather by appealing to individual decision, for example, by counseling at-risk people and their families to temporarily store household firearms away from home or otherwise making household firearms inaccessible to the at-risk person until they have recovered. Providers, gatekeepers, and gun owner groups are important partners in this work. Research is needed in a number of areas: communications research to identify effective messages and messengers for "lethal means counseling," clinical trials to identify effective interventions, translational research to ensure broad uptake of these interventions across clinical and community settings, and foundational research to better understand method choice and substitution. Approaches to suicide methods other than firearms are discussed. Means restriction is one of the few empirically based strategies to substantially reduce the number of suicide deaths.
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Cites
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Naghavi, M. (2019) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.l94 · Cited by 1,043
The global burden of fatal self-poisoning with pesticides 2006-15: Systematic review
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Metadata
- Authors
- Barber, C. W., & Miller, M. J.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Barber, Catherine W.
- ORCID
- Barber, Catherine W.
- Venue
- American Journal of Preventive Medicine
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-09
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- S264-S272
- ISSN
- 0749-3797 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2121004493
- Cited by
- 329
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 42 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 22.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Journal of Preventive Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Americanae (AECID Library) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
- Social Sciences › Health › Gun Ownership and Violence Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse
- Keywords
- suicide prevention, means restriction, firearm access, household firearms, suicide methods, gatekeepers, at-risk individuals, suicide rates
- MeSH terms
- Suicide Prevention, Clinical Trials as Topic, Firearms, Humans, Ownership, Research, Risk Factors, Suicide, Suicide, Attempted, United States, Information Dissemination, Translational Research, Biomedical
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