Suicide is a serious problem with limited preventive solutions. However, as per a new study in Lancet Psychiatry, talk therapy seems to have an effective yet lasting impact on the psyche of the person attempting to commit suicide.
Reportedly, a group of researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health had found from the data of about 65,000 people, who had attempted suicide between the years 1992-2010 in Denmark. The country opened suicide clinics in 1992 and provided them nationwide in 2007. Some of the people had gone to one of these clinics and received 6-10 sessions of talk therapy, while the rest of the people did not.
The researchers analyzed the data after a 20-year follow-up, those who had received the talk intervention fared much better. The repeated acts of self-harm also reduced frequently and had a lower risk of death by any cause, including death by suicide.
The researchers compared their outcomes over time with 17,304 people who had attempted suicide and looked similar on 31 factors, but had not gone for treatment afterward.
After five years, the suicides in the group who received therapy had reduced by 26 per cent in comparison with the other group. About 145 suicide attempts and 30 suicides were prevented in the talk therapy group, the researchers estimated.
Annette Erlangsen, the study's leader and adjunct associate professor, Johns Hopkins University, US said, "Now we have evidence that psycho-social treatment - which provides support, not medication - is able to prevent suicide in a group at high risk of dying by suicide."
Thereby, the researchers suggest as per the research findings, it might be valuable to broadly implement therapy programmes for people who have attempted suicide in the past.
Interestingly, the therapy itself varied as per the individual needs of the patient so the researchers cannot say exactly what the ‘active ingredient’ that inoculated many against future suicide attempts.
