With more deaths caused by suicide in Michigan than homicide and HIV/AIDS combined, the Michigan Surgeon General's Office has released its first-ever suicide prevention plan.
The plan, announced by Surgeon General Dr. Kimberlydawn Wisdom has many goals, said Tiffany Menard, spokeswoman for the Surgeon General. But it is aiming toward one main goal: to reduce the amount of suicides and suicide attempts for every age group.
"It's not just one group," Menard said. "It's everybody."
The department's goals include increasing suicide awareness, reducing the stigma associated with suicide, getting people to talk about suicide more freely and making plans within communities to reduce suicide.
"We are working with communities to outline priorities and find out what their community most needs so (the plan) is relevant," Menard said.
Michigan's program is aligned with the national plan for suicide prevention, called the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, Menard said.
Menard said the plan would help to identify people who are at a high risk of attempting suicide and get them treatment more quickly.
Suicide affects every age group, but for white males ages 10-34, it is one of the leading causes of death, Menard said.
"It's important for every age group," Menard said. "Every age group is at risk for this. Certainly college students are also at risk."
In 2003, there were 1,018 deaths caused by suicide in Michigan while there were 644 due to homicide and 237 due to HIV/AIDS, Menard said. She said these statistics show how much awareness and attention need to be given to suicide.
In a random survey of 1,335 MSU students in 2004, 8 percent had considered attempting suicide, while 0.7 percent actually did attempt, Dennis Martell, health coordinator for Olin Health Center said.
He also said that only 9.8 percent of those surveyed said they received information on suicide. He added that suicide was last out of 12 health topics about which students received information.
Patricia Bayer, publicity coordinator for the Listening Ear Crisis Intervention Center, 313 W. Grand River Ave., said she thinks the new plan is important because it will make people more aware of the preventative resources available to them if they are considering suicide or know someone who is.
"At the very least it will raise awareness," Bayer said. "It's always good to have awareness of something of this proportion that affects a variety of people."
Martell said that getting the word out about suicide awareness is important, but not only to MSU students.
"Any time you have people seriously considering suicide, it is something we should be concerned with," Martell said. "But it is a nationwide problem, not just a problem at MSU."
