Prevention of Suicidal Behaviors: A Task For All

Suicide is a worldwide problem. A look at effective interventions and how to prevent suicide.

As reprinted from the World Health Organization

The Problem:

• In the year 2003, approximately one million people died from suicide: a "global" mortality rate of 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 seconds
• In the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide. Suicide is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15 to 44 years (both sexes); these figures do not include suicide attempts up to 20 times more frequent than completed suicide
• Suicide worldwide is estimated to represent 1.8% of the total global burden of disease in 1998, and 2.4% in countries with market and former socialist economies in 2020.
• Although traditionally suicide rates have been highest among the male elderly, rates among young people have been increasing to such an extent that they are now the group at highest risk in a third of countries, in both developed and developing countries.
• Mental disorders (particularly depression and substance abuse) are associated with more than 90% of all cases of suicide; however, suicide results from many complex sociocultural factors and is more likely to occur particularly during periods of socioeconomic, family and individual crisis situations (e.g. loss of a loved one, employment, honor)

Effective interventions:

• Strategies involving restriction of access to common methods of suicide have proved to be effective in reducing suicide rates; however, there is a need to adopt multi-sectoral approaches involving other levels of intervention and activities, such as crisis centers
• There is compelling evidence indicating that adequate prevention and treatment of depression, alcohol and substance abuse can reduce suicide rates
• School-based interventions involving crisis management, self-esteem enhancement and the development of coping skills and healthy decision making have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of suicide among the youth

Challenges and Obstacles:

• Worldwide, the prevention of suicide has not been adequately addressed due to basically a lack of awareness of suicide as a major problem and the taboo in many societies to discuss openly about it. In fact, only a few countries have included prevention of suicide among their priorities
• Reliability of suicide certification and reporting is an issue in great need of improvement
• It is clear that suicide prevention requires intervention also from outside the health sector and calls for an innovative, comprehensive multi-sectoral approach; including both health and non-health sectors, e.g. education, labor, police, justice, religion, law, politics, the media

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