American Association of Suicidology (AAS) - by Sommer Quezada

Nearly all mental health providers deal with suicidal individuals. In hospitalized psychiatry facilities, clinical and psychiatric personnel regularly interact with patients who are at risk of suicide. Despite the fact that numerous organizations have made it plain that suicides in a hospital setting are not appropriate, they do happen occasionally. In fact, over the past few years, suicide has consistently ranked among the top five most commonly reported occurrences. Over 80 percent of the total suicide cases in these incidents are attributed to insufficient or nonexistent patient assessment. This article will discuss the American Association of Suicidology and analyze how the organization came by, whom they assist in the community, the strengths and improvements of the organization while and how the organization works.

Clinical psychologist Ph.D. Shneidman S. Edwin established AS in the year1968. Dr. Edwin was named founder of The Suicide Prevention Centre at the National Mental Health Institute in Bethesda, MD, after establishing the Suicide Prevention Los Angeles Center in 1958. He had the chance to carefully observe the scant amount of suicide knowledge that was available there. AAS has provided major research conferences comprising panels and representations, workshops, pieces of training, and annual discussion interactives since its inaugural meetings (Parrott 624). In addition, the meetings produced major papers that independently submitted case and research studies in the organization peer journal reviewed Life and Suicide Threatening Behavior.

AAS is a based membership organization that aims to assist its members in the prevention of suicide. It facilitates and supports its members through availing of best practices and knowledge in the field of suicide prevention. The organization implements, develop, and facilitates accreditation of professional certifications and training programs. Further, ASS develops and implements accreditation and training programs, including responding and recognizing suicide risk, accreditation of suicide prevention, individual specialist crisis certification, Psychology certification on Autopsy, and university and college suicide prevention accreditation.

AAS's strength has been through the creation of a platform for handling life and suicide-threatening behavior that aims at handling and providing a space for empirical and other public suicide health advancement prevention. This platform demonstrates, articulates, and tests approaches to suicide public health prevention. Some of the topics in the platform focus on the evaluation of multiple suicide levels prevention approaches, examining prevention programs for suicide in vulnerable populations such as immigrants and school-aged youth, and the evaluation of public health suicide prevention measurements (Battin 774). Population assessment level approaches in identifying people at risk in all settings are also considered in the platform. Some major areas in which the organization is supposed to improve are increasing the usage awareness and understanding of the applications and approaches for mitigating suicide and prevention of suicide. In addition, the organization should increase the research and further study in building a theoretical and empirical robust approach base for suicide prevention.

AAS has helped various groups in the community, including immigrants, the disabled, and youth. The most common group that AAS has really assisted is the depressed individuals in society. Depression and suicide highly relate as most individuals, before they think or conduct a suicidal act previously, have suffered and passed through depression. AAS has also helped the autism community (Kalashnikova 672). The suicide committee and autism group have continued to link and support by providing autism-specific resources and space through their websites.

In conclusion, there is a need to develop practices and policies to advance the competence of mental health quality and professionals of care given to suicidal patients. I feel people could help out by donating to their project, because they are a nonprofit organization. The American Association of Suicidology taskforce strongly been endorsing recommendations that have been facilitating mentally competent professionals effectively trained to assist suicidal patients.

Work Cited

Battin, Margaret P. "Development of the AAS Statement on "Suicide" and "Physician Aid in Dying."" Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior 49.3 (2019): 774–776.

Friel, Breda, and Paul Fitzsimons. The Irish Association of Suicidology: A History. MD Publishing Services, 2020.

Kalashnikova, Olga. "BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIO-SPIRITUAL MODEL IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: POSSIBILITIES FROM SUICIDOLOGIST’S CONSIDERATION." Psychiatria Danubina 31. suppl 4 (2019): 672–673.

Lester, David. "The debate over whether physician-assisted suicide is the same or different from suicide." Suicidology 11 (2020): 1.

Parrott, Scott, et al. "Social media and suicide: a validation of terms to help identify suicide-related social media posts." Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 17.5 (2020): 624–634.