How We Talk About Guns and Suicide
Historically, suicide rates in Oregon have been among the highest in the United States. The Oregon Health Authority continues to show that suicide is the second leading cause of death among 10 to 24-year old’s in Oregon, and 83 percent of the firearm fatalities between 2010 and 2014 were due to suicide. Because firearms account for 50 percent of deaths by suicide nationwide, Elizabeth Marino, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Oregon State University Cascades, and a team of researchers have been looking at the way we talk about suicide with gun owners.
“Rural communities have higher rates of suicide than urban communities,” Marino said. “We also knew that firearms had a particular cultural resonance with rural communities, so we thought it would be a good place to start.”
Cultural Messaging in Rural Communities
With over 40,000 people dying each year from suicide, it’s important to note that the majority of these people visit a primary care physician within a year of their deaths. Because of this, Marino and her team started looking at how suicide intervention could be facilitated by physicians. They decided to focus on rural communities because guns are an important part of rural life.
“We wanted to do two things: first, to ask firearm owners what guns meant to them, and what would be the best way to talk about them with a physician; and second, to ask firearm owners what they were doing in their own families and communities to help keep people safe when someone around them had suicidal ideation or were thinking about suicide,” Marino says.
http://www.corvallisadvocate.com/2017/talk-guns-suicide/
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