The Transition House Blog

Have you ever noticed a friend's post on Facebook that made you concerned for their well-being? Now, instead of simply reporting a post to Facebook's busy corporate team, your reported post goes directly to Facebook’s global community operations team, a group of hundreds of people around the world who monitor flagged posts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Posts that are specifically tagged as potentially self-harmful are to be expedited and reviewed more quickly by the team members. The team members who evaluate potentially suicidal content are given special training. So how exactly does this new feature save lives?

Young adult and teen suicide is the third leading cause of death for those between ages 10 and 24. The mental health community and advocates for young adults are working to bring awareness to this major issue. Providing suicide and depression treatment for young adults is a crucial element to making a positive change to this situation. It’s not just mental health professionals who can help, though – knowing the warning signs of depression and suicide, so that you know when to ask questions and when to encourage someone to get help, can lower the young adult and teen suicide rate.

About 22 veterans a day take their own life, according to statistics released by the U.S. Veterans Administration.
The rate of suicide among veterans remained fairly constant through 2003, but began to spike following wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of estimated daily suicides was 19 through 2007, but rose to 22 self-inflicted deaths in 2009.