through the legislature would
provide $150,000 over the next two years toward a grant program
supporting suicide prevention in gun shops.
The grant money could go to train staff at retailers who
sell guns or at gun ranges to recognize signs that someone is
considering suicide, provide prevention materials,
or provide voluntary firearm storage
for the owner of the weapon.
We turn to Dr. Tony Thrasher, president of the Wisconsin
Psychiatric Association, for his take on this proposal,
and thanks very much for being here.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> So, what is your take on this proposal?
I think it's an excellent first step.
Gun violence in Wisconsin, and gun violence nationally,
is a public health issue.
And it's worsening, and while most people think of gun
violence and the focus is on externalized violence such as
homicide or mass shootings, the majority of gun violence in most
states now is suicide.
So this is a really good first step in a public health sense.
Kind of the community looking out for everybody and getting
this information into an area where there are a lot of
firearms and a lot of people looking to purchase firearms.
And whether you're reaching somebody who is suicidal or a
family member of someone who may be suicidal,
it's a really nice intervention that hopefully will have
significant impact.
>> So, what would gun retailers be looking for to recognize in
someone who might be considering suicide?
>> I think there's a lot of good conversations
that happen at any retail intersection
and any sort of marketing and sales component.
So, I think getting those frontline individuals to look
for signs of depression, sadness, mood lability, anxiety.
Even sometimes going so far as to look for specific warning
signs about people talking about the end of their life or feeling
helpless or hopeless might be a really nice intersection for
people to intervene or at least talk to somebody and offer
services.
>> How would they respond to those signs?
I think that's going to be a very interesting scenario,
depending upon which group is doing it
and in what part of the state.
You may be-- most counties have crisis service type of
intervention, so it'd be a nice pairing to have as if somebody
does one of these grants, making sure they know who their mobile
crisis workers are.
They could come talk to somebody and help them through this.
A lot of periods of suicidal ideation are very powerful
and very episodic.
And so, there's good evidence that if we can get somebody to
somebody when they're having their worst day,
that you can make a big difference.
And not just abort that suicide attempt,
but abort future suicide attempts.
>> Why is that kind of point of contact with a gun retailer
or a gun range important?
>> I think there's two components to it.
One is, I think, what probably seems most apparent,
which is if somebody is feeling impulsively self-harmful,
and they don't have a firearm, that is most likely where they
would obtain a firearm.
But I think the even bigger picture is one of culture.
I think whenever you kind of look at the issue around
firearms, it's naturally can be divisive.
Even when we wish in a public health sense that it was not.
And so, in this case, by kind of setting up at that shop,
we are starting a cultural shift.
Then, it's okay to talk about being suicidal,
and it's okay to talk about being depressed,
even if you are someone who owns firearms or has family members
who own firearms.
I think it's a neat way to start breaking down some of that
stigma and just opening up the conversation.
Hence, why that may be a better cultural component
than anything else.
>> Do you think it's likely that someone would actually
voluntarily hand over their firearm if a retailer or another
person said, "Look, you look like you're having a little bit
of trouble. "?
>> I do, and I think we see this a lot in safety planning with
people that have suicidal thoughts is they're already
doing this.
They're often sharing it with family members or friends or
perhaps engaging in other good means reduction issues like gun
locks or specific gun safes they don't have access to,
or the codes are changed whenever they're having periods
of depression.
So, I do think having this as another alternative,
particularly with a lot of people that kind of work with
their firearms on a regular basis, and perhaps ex-military,
ex-law enforcement, that relationship with the retailer
may be a friendship one, as well.
So, you may have some kind of ties in between family, friends.
"Who would I feel safe leaving this with for the short term?"
I do think there's a lot of possibilities there.
The Department of Health Services reports that the
suicide rate in Wisconsin increased 32%
from 22, 000 to 2020.
>> Are suicides still on the rise?
>> Yes, scarily enough, the population it's rising most in
is our younger generation.
Ages 15 to 24, it is now the number one cause of death,
which, if you go back 10 to 15 years ago,
seems very shocking compared to what it used to be when we
focused on things like impaired driving and accidents.
But unfortunately, suicides are on the rise,
and given that firearms are unfortunately the most lethal
way to do that, it makes sense if we're going to look at
reducing suicide, we look at addressing that primary cause,
which is firearms.
>> Are there areas of the state that are suffering more?
>> Unfortunately, we start to see a lot of suicides,
more so in rural areas than urban areas.
I'm not so sure that's a causative,
as much as a correlative, but those are definitely areas with
less resources, or it's harder to get to the resource.
And so, unlike Madison or Milwaukee,
where your therapist may live within a 5-minute drive,
you're talking about people that live in areas that may not get
to those services without driving hundreds of miles.
So, in addition to other risk factors in the rural area,
particularly farming communities where we've seen a rise in
suicides over the past two years as well.
>> So, other than not having kind of the mental health
supports, potentially, what else is driving those trends?
>> You tend to see in the rural communities?
Not just like you said probably lack of connection to services,
but also, you're in a much more isolated area.
>> So, we know a lot of treatment for depression and
mitigation against suicide is connectedness, community.
And while there are wonderful communities,
they can be more spread out.
The more rural you get, you also find a higher possession rate of
firearms in that area, too.
So, once again, something that is of high suicide risk is much
more probably obtainable in some of those areas than in other
sections that have lower suicide rates.
Which once again, when people are having their worst days,
what you want to do is have a safe environment around them.
And the more firearms there are, the less safe it becomes.
>> So, you have described this as kind of a good first step,
and you think that other professionals like yourselves
in and in public health think the same?
>> Yes, very much so.
And I think the nice thing about the public health realm is
twofold.
One is we're dealing with it as a community.
This isn't an issue where we say it's your job, or it's your job,
or they should be doing more.
If it's a true public health problem,
then we all get together to try to fix it in doing what we can
from each of our specific specialties.
And secondly, public health interventions have worked.
Seat belts have worked.
Catalytic converters in cars have worked.
Putting child-proof tops on medicine bottles has worked.
Public health interventions can mitigate large-scale kind of
risks to our health.
And I think this is no different.
So, it's nice that this is kind of a first step,
but I hope we continue to enlarge it in a public health
sense, as we look at gun violence really as probably the
primary public health thing facing our society right now.
>> And what would the next steps be in your mind?
>> It would be nice to see further consideration of
education beyond retail gun shops.
Really getting this out into the open.
I think education is huge because there's a lot of people
that own firearms that themselves have never been
suicidal.
So, you don't think about it as a risk,
as opposed to saying there's other people that are in your
house.
There's other people in your orbit.
There's other people you'll come into contact with.
They may be feeling that way, and as such,
we want to mitigate their risk too.
And of course, another consideration down the road is
many states have initiated some ways to remove firearms based
upon other criteria, against people's will,
which this bill is not that.
This is a volitional possible handing over firearms,
but there are other things, such as emergency restraining
protective orders, that have been seen in other states across
the country that has either reduced suicide rates or
sometimes reduce violence to others rates as well.
>> All right, Dr. Thrasher, thanks very much.
>> Thank you for having me.