Newsletter

Invest in Health and Prevention2023-11-20

The greatest wealth is health.

Virgil

Suicide prevention falls upon all of us. We need to do our best to take care of ourselves, our families, and the community at large. The key is to identify mundane and non-specific risk factors early, and address them, before too many of them accumulate and the person enters a high risk zone, where just one more negative life event pushes them over the edge. While our work on suicides had identified the month of September as the highest overall risk month for the population at large, November was the highest risk month for younger people.

As families gather for Thanksgiving in the US, discussing ways of improving health, including mental health, and supporting each other across these journeys, is an opportunity not to be missed. You can reconnect, gather family history, see how others are doing, encourage people to be proactive, lend a helping hand. It is a much more satisfying, useful, and mindful way to spend these days than just watching TV or shopping for things you do not really need. If you want to shop for something non-trivial, give the gift of health, by buying for yourself and others health and fitness related products and services.

Health is more important than wealth, or influence.

Live. Happier. Longer.