25.L. Workshop: Suicide prevention: new insights?
Authors:   Organised by: EUPHA Public mental health section,   Chair persons: Johan Bilsen – EUPHA-PMH, Jutta Lindert – EUPHA-PMH
Published: October 2020

Suicide is a major public health issue. Worldwide, about 800,000 people die by suicide each year. The global suicide mortality rate is estimated to be 10.5 deaths per 100,000 people. Suicide accounts for about 1.4% of all deaths globally. Suicide rates vary greatly between countries. About 80% of all suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries. Europe has an average suicide mortality rate of about 14 per 100,000 with a wide variation between countries. Many more men than women die by suicide. All ages in the population are affected, but rates clearly rise with increasing age, while it is the second leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 24 years. Suicide attempts, i.e. non-fatal suicidal behaviour, are estimated to be about 10 to 20 times more frequent than actual suicide. Scientific research identified various genetic, psychological, socio-economic, environmental and cultural factors contributing to suicidal behaviour. Suicide is then regarded as the result of a complex dynamic interaction between these factors, often described by explanatory models of suicide, such as the stress-diathesis, gene-environment, or bio psychosocial model. The high suicide rates, and the huge impact of suicide for the individual, the relatives and society as a whole urged to develop strategies to counter these risk factors, targeting an entire population, or some vulnerable groups such as persons who have suffered trauma or abuse, or specific vulnerable individuals such as suicide attempters. More and more countries structure and organise all these initiatives in national or regional suicide prevention programs. However, there is much discussion about the effectiveness of suicide prevention initiatives (scientific research showing evidence for the effectiveness of suicide prevention interventions is difficult and rather scarce), and often there is little communication on these programs between countries. By bringing together researchers and policy makers on this domain from different countries and background, this workshop aims to contribute to the scientific insight in this topic and to the improvement of an integrated and evidence-based suicide prevention policy.

Eva Dumon, Gerdien Franx, and Saska Roskar will give us an overview of the national suicide prevention programs in their countries, respectively Belgium, the Netherlands and Slovenia. They will discuss the development, implementation and preliminary evaluation of the diverse initiatives. Dr. John Cachia point to the importance of taking into account the specific context of communities in the development and implementation of suicide prevention initiatives, and he shows how relevant clinical and public mental health data can be in this regard. And finally, Ulrich Hegerl will explain how systematic research on the on-going community based 4-level intervention program ('European Alliance against Depression') can add useful insights in suicide prevention strategies.

Key messages

Suicide is a major public health issue in many countries, and several national suicide prevention programs are developed and implemented. We need more cross-country communication, and sound scientific research about the content and effectiveness of the developed preventive initiatives.