Campaign to Prevent Suicide Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, today, I rise to urge my colleagues to support the bipartisan bill, H.R. 4585, the Campaign to Prevent Suicide Act, that I introduced with my friend, Greg Gianforte.

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and for that very reason, this bill couldn't be more important. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States and the second leading cause of death for 15- to 34-year-olds. Overall suicide rates increased 35 percent from 1999 through 2018.

Suicide can be prevented, but unfortunately, it is still a taboo topic for much of American society. The stigma against discussing suicide and seeking help is a significant barrier to prevention. It is one of those things where if suicide happened in a family, then no one would ever talk about it.

It is important to tackle this head-on. I can't tell you how many times I bring this up at an event--it is something that I have been working on with good friends like Greg--and there is this discomfort. People look away; they shuffle their feet; and some people slip out of the back of the room. Yet, every time at the end of the event people will come up and say: Thank you so much for talking about that. I lost my aunt. I lost my brother.

Nobody talks about it. A change in social norms from a culture of avoidance to a culture of engagement is needed in order to ensure that those who need help can actually seek it.

The United States Air Force has developed a similar initiative tailored to the Air Force in order to change the culture surrounding suicide, and researchers found that it is associated with a 33 percent drop in the relative risk reduction in suicide. This reflects the importance of engaging, but the second piece is knowing how to do it.

The Federal Communications Commission has the new 988 number we all talked about, but of course, we have to tell people about it, which is why it is so time sensitive.

The Campaign to Prevent Suicide would, number one, act to change the culture around suicide so Americans know to intervene rather than to ignore. Again, when I was growing up, you were not supposed to say, ``Debbie, are you feeling suicidal?'' because you might give her the idea to do it. Now, we say, ``Debbie, do you feel like hurting yourself?'' or, ``Do you want to kill yourself?''

I was so thrilled when I went to the emergency room last year. I got something in my eye. I just had something in my eye, and the first thing they said is: Do you feel like killing yourself?

I thanked the nurse, and I thanked the doctor for making sure that I was okay.

Of course, it will be an awareness campaign for the new 988 number, but also it will educate media and social media because the world has changed. Today, often it will be a Facebook post or a tweet or an Instagram that might be the first hint that somebody is thinking about killing themselves.

We are dealing with a suicide epidemic made worse during the pandemic because the very stress of the pandemic exacerbated it for all of us. With 200,000 dead who are in the news all the time, we have a death anxiety that mostly only people in battle have. So, this is really, really important.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this good bipartisan bill to save lives and to save the enormous burden of grief that families feel.

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