Articles
Military Suicide Prevention: It’s Time for Productive Stupidity
By Craig J. Bryan, PsyD, ABPP
September 24, 2018
Productive Stupidity
A required reading for my students at The University of Utah is a brief essay by Dr. Martin Schwartz entitled “The importance of stupidity in scientific research (link is external).” In this essay, Schwartz talks about the importance of productive stupidity, which refers to being ignorant by choice. He notes that the most important questions we face often force us into the uncomfortable position of not knowing. However, being comfortable with ignorance and the possibility of being wrong is what enables us to make progress towards answering these important questions. In other words, the most important advances are typically achieved by those who are willing to admit, “I don’t know.” When it comes to suicide prevention, if we’re unwilling to acknowledge what we don’t know, this unwillingness may lead us to cling to faulty assumptions that cause us to become stuck in our efforts to prevent suicide.
What the Order of Unhappy Facebook Posts Say About Suicide Risk
SALT LAKE CITY — The sequencing of social media posts may provide hints that a veteran is in acute distress and at risk for suicide, offering potential to intervene, according to a new study from the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah.
The findings might hold true for others in distress, too.
"How to Use Social Media Patterns to Identify Veterans at Risk for Suicide" was released as part of the Bob Woodruff Foundation's Stand Smart for Heroes series. The study found veterans who took their own lives were more likely to have recently posted about stressful events, followed closely by posts about emotional distress. The reverse — emotional distress and then stressful events — did not have the same association with suicide, said lead researcher and the center's executive director Craig Bryan, a board-certified clinical psychologist. ...