Report: Suicide attempts in Virginia on decline

(The Center Square) — New data from the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association shows that emergency room visits resulting from attempted suicide were still higher in 2023 than in 2020 but down from 2021.

While emergency rooms in the commonwealth saw a total of 863 visits of this kind in 2020, numbers continued to climb in 2021 to 985 visits, a 14% increase. Since then, they’ve declined some each year. In 2022, there were 969 visits, and last year ended with 920.

Julian Walker, spokesman for the association, explained that utilization of most service lines in hospitals declined during the pandemic – as many types of non-COVID care were postponed and some wanted to avoid hospital settings altogether – with one “notable exception.”

“During that time, we saw a demand for behavioral health, mental health, substance abuse services rise in hospital settings when demand or utilization of the vast majority of other hospital-based service lines declined,” Walker told The Center Square.

And Americans have continued to seek greater support when it comes to their mental health.

“We are in a moment in time where there clearly seems to be more demand for [mental health] services. Americans say that their mental wellness is suffering or has declined,” Walker said.

The commonwealth is in the midst of implementing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Right Help, Right Now plan, which was created to respond to the mental health crisis. It’s a three-year plan that began in 2023 and designed to effectively overhaul parts of Virginia’s behavioral health system that aren’t meeting the increased need for services.

The plan rests on six pillars: same-day crisis care; ensuring mental health patients receive the health care they need, rather than remaining law enforcement’s responsibility; expanding the capacity of Virginia’s health care system to treat behavioral health conditions; targeted support for substance use disorders and overdose; enhancing the behavioral health workforce; and pursuing “innovations to close capacity gaps.”

While Walker expressed his support for the plan and its parts, treatment capacity – in the appropriate setting – and workforce development stand out to him as particularly fundamental.

“All of these prongs are, I think, important. Making sure that there is capacity within the system across facility types and provider types [is important], whether that’s community-based settings, inpatient settings, outpatient care …. and that there are multiple points of entry into the system, so that different types of treatment needs can be accommodated at appropriate levels of care,” Walker said.

“You have to have trained, caring, capable, compassionate people to deliver that care.”