Take the PREVENTS Pledge to REACH and support suicide prevention

Background

Suicide is a national public health challenge that causes tremendous pain for individuals, families and communities across the country.

On average, 132 Americans die by suicide each day accounting for 47,173 suicide deaths in 2017.
The number of Veteran suicides has exceeded 6,000 each year from 2008-2017.
Suicide is also the 10^th leading cause of death among all ages and the 2nd leading cause of death among those ages 10-34 in the United States.

Take the Pledge — Download the data file to see cities where people are taking the Pledge.

About PREVENTS

On March 05, 2019 the President signed Executive Order 13861, known as The President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide (or PREVENTS) calling for the development of a comprehensive plan to empower Veterans and end suicide through coordinated suicide prevention efforts, prioritized research activities, and strengthened collaboration across the public and private sectors.

Research shows that for every suicide, 135 people are personally affected — families, friends, co-workers, and community members — which means in one year, up to 6.3 million people were directly affected by suicide.1

By taking this pledge, you are making a commitment to increase awareness of mental health issues in general and prevent suicide for all Americans.

I, Your Name, pledge to do my part to help change the national conversation around mental health and suicide by:

Learning about suicide risk factors, protective factors, and warning signs;
Promoting and initiating conversations about PREVENTS’ resources, efforts and activities;
Supporting efforts where and how I can;
Sharing social media messages from PREVENTS;
Encouraging others to utilize PREVENTS’ resources;
Using safe messaging;
Inspiring other individuals to take the PREVENTS Pledge to REACH; and
Practicing and encouraging lethal means safe storage.

By signing this pledge, I understand that suicide prevention is a national public health challenge and that everyone has a role to play. I am committed to increasing awareness of mental health challenges and suicide prevention practices to reduce suicide for all Americans.

More information is available on www.va.gov/PREVENTS/

¹ Cerel, J., Brown, M.M., Maple, M., Singleton, M., van de, Venne, J., Moore, M. and Flaherty, C. (2019), How Many People Are Exposed to Suicide? Not Six. Suicide Life Threat Behav, 49: 529-534.