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Archive for: Mark S. Kaplan

UCLA Study Highlights How Alcohol Use Contributes to Firearm-Involved Suicide

March 29, 2023/0 Comments/in Luskin's Latest Blog Mark S. Kaplan /by Stan Paul

A new UCLA study shows an association between acute alcohol use and a higher probability of firearm-involved suicide in the United States. The findings published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s online open-access journal, JAMA Network Open, also suggest a point of alcohol intoxication where individuals have a lower degree of motor coordination, resulting in a lower probability of using a firearm in suicide. As alcohol consumption increases, the probability of a firearm-involved suicide normally increases. But at a specific blood alcohol concentration level — around 0.40 grams per deciliter (g/dL) for men and 0.30 g/dL for women — the probability starts to decrease. The study was co-authored by Mark S. Kaplan, professor of social welfare, and Shannon Lange of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. “Our study is a unique and important contribution to our understanding of risk factors associated with suicides involving firearms, which account for over half of all suicides — more than 47,000 in 2021 — in the United States,” Kaplan said. In the cross-sectional study, the dose-response relationship between blood alcohol concentration and the probability of using a firearm as the method of suicide is described as an inverted U-shape for both male and female decedents. The study used mortality data from the National Violent Death Reporting System from 2003-2020.  The analyses were restricted to solitary or single-victim suicides among men and women 18 years and older. The authors urge interventions targeting heavy alcohol use, which may bolster efforts to reduce the suicide mortality rate, particularly those involving a firearm.

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A Rise in Alcohol-Involved Suicides Among Women

September 22, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Mark S. Kaplan /by Mary Braswell

An article in Spectrum, the online magazine of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, showcased research co-authored by Social Welfare Professor Mark Kaplan showing that suicide deaths involving heavy alcohol use have increased significantly among women in the United States in recent years. The study included data from the National Violent Death Reporting System, in which 115,202 suicides of adults 18 and older were reported between 2003 and 2018. Suicides among people who had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% or greater were considered alcohol-involved. During the study period, the proportion of alcohol-involved suicides significantly increased each year for women of all age groups, with the greatest increase among women over age 65. In contrast, only middle-aged men had a significant yearly increase in alcohol-involved suicides. The findings point to a need for more education and awareness of the relationship between heavy alcohol use and suicide, as well as improved screening and intervention strategies.

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UCLA Study Finds Significant Increase in Firearm Suicide Among Young Black Adults

July 28, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin's Latest Blog Mark S. Kaplan /by Stan Paul

The suicide rate for young Black adults has increased significantly since 2013, according to a new research report co-authored by UCLA Luskin’s Mark Kaplan, professor of social welfare. Increases in overall suicide rates among young Black and other racial/ethnic minority populations are characterized as “alarming” by Kaplan and colleagues from UCLA and UC Merced in the study published by the journal Archives of Suicide Research. Based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the research team identified adults aged 18-25 who died by suicide from any method, as well as firearm-related suicides in the United States. After more than a decade of declining rates of suicide among young Black adults, the new results showed an 84.5% increase in the firearm suicide rate among Black men and a 76.9% increase among young Black women between 2013 and 2019. “The mechanisms/causes of this concerning trend are not clear,” wrote Kaplan and co-authors about the “sharp reversal” of the downward trend since 2013. “This context highlights how the intersection of age, gender and race influences suicide trends.” Additional research in relation to suicide risk is recommended around potential population-level environmental exposures, rising racial and economic inequalities, and the recent proliferation of firearms. “Future research should consider how structural factors may lead to suicide and the appropriate analytic methods needed to draw rigorous inferences from these complex relationships,” researchers said.


 

Understanding Male Suicide

July 11, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Mark S. Kaplan /by Mary Braswell

Big Think showcased a new study of men, suicide and mental health authored by Social Welfare Professor Mark Kaplan and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study tracked recent suicide deaths among U.S. males age 10 and older and found that 60% of the victims had no documented mental health conditions. In many cases, alcohol and firearms were significant factors, the researchers determined. While it’s likely that some of the males without known mental health issues were concealing struggles, the study also suggested that men tend to be more impulsive than women. “Greater investment and focus on mental health is undeniably needed in the U.S., but to make a dent in the tragic number of American male suicides, reducing firearm access, advocating responsible alcohol use, lowering poverty, and teaching males healthy coping methods to deal with acutely stressful situations might save a lot more lives,” the article said.

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Gun Violence Creates Shockwaves, Kaplan Says

June 27, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Mark S. Kaplan /by Zoe Day

Social Welfare Professor Mark Kaplan was featured in an Alabama Media Group article about a shooting at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. The attack left three people dead, but it is not considered a “mass shooting” since that term technically refers to shootings with four or more victims. Experts have noted that gun violence is on the rise in Alabama and across the United States, and the entire community of Vestavia Hills was rocked by the shooting. “When we hear about shootings in schools, churches, grocery stores, that does send shockwaves across the citizens,” said Kaplan, an authority on gun violence.

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Most Male Suicides in U.S. Show No Known Prior Mental Health Link, Study Reveals Use of firearms and alcohol consumption are common factors in these deaths, UCLA and CDC researchers find

June 14, 2022/2 Comments/in For Faculty, For Policymakers, For Students, For Undergraduates, School of Public Affairs, Social Welfare, Social Welfare News Mark S. Kaplan /by Stan Paul
By Stan Paul

A majority of American men who die by suicide don’t have any known history of mental health problems, according to new research by UCLA professor Mark Kaplan and colleagues.

“What’s striking about our study is the conspicuous absence of standard psychiatric markers of suicidality among a large number of males of all ages who die by suicide,” said Kaplan, a professor of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

For the study, published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Kaplan and his co-authors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked recent suicide deaths among U.S. males age 10 and older. They found that 60% of victims had no documented mental health conditions.

Further, males without a history of mental health issues died more frequently by firearms than those with known mental health issues, and many were found to have alcohol in their systems, the researchers noted.

The report highlights the major public health challenge of addressing suicide among males, who are far more likely to die by suicide and less likely to have known mental health conditions than females. In 2019, for instance, males accounted for 80% of all suicide deaths in the U.S., the authors said, and suicide is the eighth-leading cause of death among males 10 and older.

Kaplan and his colleagues examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System for the most recent three-year period available, 2016 to 2018, during which more than 70,000 American males died by suicide. More than 42,000 of them had no known mental health conditions, they found.

The researchers then compared characteristics of those with and without known mental health conditions across their life span in four age groups: adolescents (10–17 years old), young adults (18–34), middle aged adults (35–64) and older adults (65 and older). Identifying the various factors that contribute to suicides among these groups is crucial to developing targeted suicide prevention efforts, especially outside of mental health systems, the team emphasized.

Among their findings, they discovered that across all groups, those without known mental health conditions were less likely to have had a history of contemplating or attempting suicide, or both, than those with such issues. In particular, young and middle-aged adults without known mental health conditions disclosed suicidal intent significantly less often, they said.

In addition, males with no mental health history who died by suicide in three of the four age groups — adolescents, young adults and middle-aged men — more commonly experienced relationship problems, arguments or another type of personal crisis as precipitating circumstances than for those with prior histories.

The researchers emphasized the importance of focusing on these kinds of acute situational stressors as part of suicide prevention efforts and working to discourage the use of alcohol, drugs and guns during times of crisis — particularly for teens and young adults, who may be more prone to act impulsively.

Kaplan and his colleagues said the findings highlight the potential benefits of strategies to create protective environments, provide support during stressful transitions, and enhance coping and problem-solving skills across the life span.

“Suicide prevention initiatives for males might benefit from comprehensive approaches focusing on age-specific stressors reported in this study, in addition to standard psychiatric markers,” the researchers wrote.

“These findings,” Kaplan said, “could begin to change views on the non–mental health factors driving up the rate of suicide among men.”

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Alcohol Use Prior to Suicide Trends Higher in Women Than Men in New Study

May 10, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin's Latest Blog Mark S. Kaplan /by Stan Paul

Alcohol use preceding death by suicide increased among women compared with men in the United States between 2003 and 2018, according to a newly published study co-authored by UCLA Luskin Social Welfare Professor Mark S. Kaplan. The report, published in the May 2022 online edition of Addiction, a publication of the Society for the Study of Addiction, included data from the National Violent Death Reporting System. The data included more than 115,000 men and women 18 years and older who died from alcohol-involved suicide from 2003 to 2018. Kaplan and co-authors Shannon Lange, Alexander Tran and Jürgen Rehm, researchers at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, in Toronto, found that while the prevalence of heavy alcohol use and the suicide mortality rate increased among men and women, women had experienced a notably higher increase in both. Because heavy alcohol use — a well-established risk factor for suicide — may have contributed to the observed sex disparity in the suicide mortality rate increase, the researchers sought to estimate the temporal trend of the sex- and age-group-specific proportion of suicides that were alcohol-involved in the United States. In the study period, the proportion of suicides that were alcohol-involved significantly increased on average annually for women of all age groups, while only middle-aged men experienced a significant average annual percentage increase, they reported. Kaplan and colleagues note that the results of the present study are important for both clinical and preventative efforts. “Evidence that alcohol use may have been a core driver in the accelerated increase in the rate of suicide among women will, hopefully, promote additional research in this area,” they wrote.


 

UCLA Luskin Scholars Receive Fulbright Awards

March 8, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin's Latest Blog Ian Holloway, Mark S. Kaplan /by Stan Paul

Two UCLA Luskin Social Welfare faculty members have been named Fulbright awardees by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Professor of Social Welfare Mark S. Kaplan received a Fulbright Specialist Award, which will allow him to complete a project at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain in the Department of Social Sciences. Professor of Social Welfare Ian Holloway received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, which enables American scholars, artists, faculty and professionals to lecture and conduct research abroad for up to a year. Kaplan, now a four-time Fulbright awardee, said the main focus of his project with the Spanish university is to help “design and plan internationalization strategies for their research that maximize the impact of their work.” The Fulbright Specialist Program sends U.S. faculty and professionals to serve as expert consultants on curriculum, faculty development, institutional planning and related subjects at academic institutions abroad for two to six weeks. Holloway will spend four months as a visiting scholar at Universidad de Los Andes and work in partnership with a community-based organization in Bogotá, Colombia, that serves transgender people engaged in human rights organizing. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build connections between the United States and other countries. The program, which operates in over 160 countries, was established in 1946 and has provided more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.


 

Kaplan Explains Rising Suicide Rates Among Middle-Aged Men

April 19, 2021/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Mark S. Kaplan /by Zoe Day

Professor of Social Welfare Mark Kaplan was featured in a Real Issue Productions film about the rise of mass shootings and the controversies surrounding the national gun debate. “The role of social status and suicide, particularly among males, is gaining attention,” Kaplan said. He explained that the mortality rate among white middle-aged men is rising, largely in part to an increase in suicide rates. As the middle class shrinks, many have lost their jobs and feel humiliated and unhappy — particularly less educated men who feel disenfranchised and abandoned by society. Suicide and mental illness are highly stigmatized in the United States, Kaplan said, noting that “people don’t like to talk about their mental health problems.” Even if guns are taken away, some people still may attempt suicide but “if they do, they are less likely to do so with highly lethal means,” Kaplan said. The film is available for viewing via the UCLA Library.

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Kaplan on Mitigating Youth Suicide Risk During Pandemic

April 2, 2021/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Mark S. Kaplan /by Zoe Day

Professor of Social Welfare Mark Kaplan was featured in a Press-Enterprise article about the increase in suicide risk among young people during the COVID-19 pandemic. While there has been a decline in adult suicides since the beginning of the pandemic, data show that suicides among minors have stayed consistent or increased compared to before the pandemic. Many experts have expressed concern that social isolation, distance learning and other pandemic stresses are hitting young people especially hard. Crisis hotlines have experienced an increase in calls from young people suffering mental health problems. Kaplan, who has been studying suicide for decades, explained that young people who were already more likely to consider killing themselves are more vulnerable now, including LGBTQ youth, those suffering abuse, homeless youth, those with substance abuse problems, those living in foster homes or those growing up in poverty. “There’s a physical isolation that’s taking its toll,” he said. “It’s leading to despair.”

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