Wednesday, August 2, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
11
Among gun owners, culturally tailored suicide prevention is best
By Steve Lundeberg
Correspondent
BEND – Gun owners are
much more receptive to sui-
cide-prevention messages tai-
lored to respect their rights as
firearms enthusiasts than they
are to messages that use lan-
guage that aims to be cultur-
ally neutral, a study published
last week suggests.
The research at Oregon
State University-Cascades is
significant because more than
half of the roughly 40,000
people in the United States
who take their own lives every
year do so with a gun.
Past research shows that
the vast majority of people
with “suicidal ideation” –
thoughts of killing themselves
– will live meaningful, pro-
ductive lives if they get past
the rough patch that caused
them to think about suicide.
But only five percent of
people who attempt suicide
via firearm survive; hence
the need for messaging that’s
effective in helping friends
and family members hold
onto guns while their loved
ones are experiencing suicidal
ideation.
The researchers conducted
interviews in 2015 with 39
adult gun owners from rural
communities in Central
Oregon. The goal was to
understand the culture of gun
ownership and learn about
acceptable, non-threatening
methods of improving firearm
safety that respect the rights of
gun owners while also helping
suicidal patients stay safe.
The interviews led to a
one-page suicide prevention
message that encouraged
restricting firearm access and
also respected the cultural val-
ues and rights of gun owners;
the opening, for example, read
“People who love guns, love
you. For many of us, firearms
are an American way of life
– a constitutional right and a
necessity in order to protect
ourselves and our families.
And with this right to bear
arms comes responsibility.
Just as we must refuse to be
a victim of violent crime, we
must also use common sense.”
The culturally tailored
message was then used as
part of a nationwide survey
of more than 800 gun owners
to determine the likelihood of
it causing owners of firearms
to engage in multiple key gun
safety behaviors for suicide
prevention – such as asking a
suicidal person to give away
his or her guns temporarily to
another trusted individual.
Survey participants were
randomly assigned to receive
one of four messages: a con-
trol message that read only,
“Mental health and suicide
prevention are important pub-
lic health issues”; a standard,
one-page message explaining
that suicide is preventable,
what the warning signs are,
and how to take action; the
culture-specific message that
resulted from the interviews
with gun owners; and a mes-
sage that combined the tai-
lored message with the stan-
dard message.
“Respondents who
received our culturally spe-
cific message in conjunc-
tion with standard suicide
prevention content reported
the greatest likelihood of tak-
ing steps to restrict access to
firearms for those deemed
at risk of suicide,” said
OSU-Cascades anthropolo-
gist Elizabeth Marino. “This
tendency was enhanced for
individuals who were more
politically conservative, lived
in more rural areas, and sup-
ported gun rights to a stronger
degree.
“The findings underscore
the importance of cultural fac-
tors in public health messag-
ing,” she said. “Messaging
that respects the values of gun
owners could hold promise
in promoting firearm safety
for suicide prevention. It’s
important to understand what
matters most to people and
not use language that inad-
vertently promotes values or
judgments that are not mean-
ingful to the group you’re try-
ing to reach.”
In this case, inadvertent
promotion could come via
words or sentences that sug-
gested an anti-firearm bias.
The study found the stan-
dard one-page public health
message was no more effec-
tive in moving people’s atti-
tudes than the one-sentence
control message, which was
effectively no message.
“Information by itself
isn’t changing minds at all,”
Marino said. “But if the
language in the message is
sensitive and respects cul-
turally specific values, then
people are more open to the
information and will maybe
change their decisions. In
such politically and culturally
divisive times, it’s especially
worth noting that there are
in fact joint goals that people
with diverse perspectives can
talk about and reach consen-
sus on as long as we under-
stand each person’s cultural
framework.”
Marino said one of the
findings from the informa-
tional interviews was that
many gun owners are already
intervening when necessary
by temporarily limiting access
to firearms when someone is
suicidal.
“This really speaks toward
understanding the coping
strategies and resilience in
communities to solve prob-
lems and find ways to build
on those,” she said. “We based
our message on what people
are already doing.”
Joining Marino in the study
were two OSU-Cascades col-
leagues, psychologist and cor-
responding author Christopher
Wolsko and public health
specialist Susan Keys, as well
as Holly Wilcox of Johns
Hopkins University. The
La Pine Community Health
Center and its medical direc-
tor, Laura Pennavaria, also
collaborated on the study.
“That interdisciplinary per-
spective really helped us pay
attention to the cultural frame-
work from which all of these
attitudes and actions emerge,”
Marino said. “There are more
deaths by suicide than deaths
by car accidents every year
in the U.S., and suicide is the
No. 1 means of violent death
globally. It’s a really impor-
tant, pressing issue nationally
and internationally.”
Marino notes that often
someone will make the deci-
sion to take his or her life, and
then act on it, inside a five-
minute window.
“People believe if some-
one wants to kill himself or
herself, they will just eventu-
ally do it, but that’s actually
not the case,” she said. “If
we can help them get past the
rough patch, chances are great
that people will survive. They
go on to lead full, meaningful
lives.”
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