Suicide Outreach
During Mental Awareness Week in October 2018, Naomi penned an open letter alongside physician Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D. about suicide in America.
“People who commit suicide are experiencing problems with mood, impulse control and aggression, all of which involve discrete circuits in the brain that regulate these aspects of human experience, but we still don’t understand how these circuits go haywire in the brains of suicide victims,” the letter read. “Right now about six times as many people in the United States die by taking their own lives as do from HIV/AIDS or heart disease, but the money to study suicide is lacking.”
She wrote that “it’s about time we do better” when it comes to research and funding for suicide prevention after citing a study that revealed “heart disease researchers receive 29 times the amount of federal funds than suicide and suicide prevention scientists. In fact, the federal government spent more money last year to study dietary supplements than to understand why Americans decide to take their own lives.”
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