Everyone savour getting a personal , handwritten letter of the alphabet . But the personal missive may be especially beneficial to citizenry at risk of self-annihilation , a raw work finds . The enquiry , print inPLOS Medicine , followed a pilot study of a suicide bar method called theAttempted Suicide Short Intervention Programat a hospital in Switzerland . As part of the method , patients received espouse - up letters from therapist they had seen after being admitted to the infirmary for attempting suicide .
A total of 120 patient lead part in the buffer discipline , which involved get word a healer for three sessions to discuss their felo-de-se effort and genial wellness . Afterward , one-half of the patients received postal service from their therapist . The handwritten missive go far once every three months during the first class after the patients were unfreeze from the hospital , and every six months the next class . While the notes mostly contained boiler - plate advice on warning foretoken and rest secure , they also admit a few personalize statements from the healer .
The technique seems to have had a large-minded encroachment on the patients who received those letters , compared to a control group that just go through post - hospitalization therapy . Only five affected role in the letter of the alphabet - receiving group attempted suicide over the 24 months of the survey , while 41 in the restraint group did . One person in each mathematical group died from suicide .
The personalised letters may have given patients a reminder that someone care about them , as one of the sketch ’s authors toldThe Washington Post .
Despite public health efforts , “ self-annihilation has proven pig-headedly difficult to translate , to predict , and to keep , ” according to theNational Institute of Mental Health , and many people at gamey risk for felo-de-se are n’t getting the discourse they take . In the U.S. , suicide is the 10th leading suit of death ( and the second conduce cause of death for people 25–34 ) , and far more masses attempt suicide than die from it ( as manyas 25 timesmore in the case of youth , and 12 time more overall ) . So an 80 percent shrink risk of attempted suicide , as see in this work , is a pretty bad deal .
While this study had some limitations , such as patients drop out , and more pilots around the existence will be necessary ( globally , 800,000 the great unwashed kill themselves every year ) , it ’s emphatically a hopeful signaling .
And here ’s a monitor that if you are in distraint , you should make a free , confidential call to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 - 800 - 273 - TALK ( 8255 ) .
[ h / tThe Washington Post ]
