Dis­cussing an arti­cle in The New York Times on under­stand­ing and reduc­ing sui­cide rates, Mind Hacks’ Vaughan presents us with some other inter­est­ing research on the topic.

If you want a flavour of really how sim­ple the safety mea­sures need to be to make a dif­fer­ence to sui­cide rate, research has found that putting pills in blis­ter packs reduces lethal overdoses.

[…] Mak­ing it nec­es­sary to pop each pill out of its plas­tic pack­ag­ing rather than tip­ping them out of a bot­tle means less peo­ple kill themselves.

The dif­fer­ence is likely a mat­ter of min­utes, but it gives time for brief impul­sive urges to pass, and every popped pill requires a sin­gle delib­er­ate action towards sui­cide that gives a chance for the dis­tressed per­son to reconsider.