To the Editor:
Re “Sweeping Pain as Suicides Hit a 30-Year High” (front page, April 22):
The report showing a 24 percent increase in suicides should be a wake-up call to our country. If we saw numbers like this for any other cause of death, people would demand action.
The vast majority of people who die as a result of suicide have a psychiatric condition like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress. To decrease the number of suicides, we need to improve access to care by enforcing the insurance parity laws so that people are not denied treatment.
We also need to reduce stigma and prejudice against people who have a psychiatric illness so that people are not embarrassed to seek help. And just as we declared a war on cancer and increased funding for research, we need to declare a war on mental illness and accelerate the funding of research to improve treatment.
JEFFREY BORENSTEIN
New York
The writer, a psychiatrist, is president and chief executive of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
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