A new series of research papers published in The Lancet Public Health calls for a global approach to suicide prevention. The series, ‘A public health approach to suicide prevention’, presents the need to shift our understanding of suicide as a mental health issue, and understand the impact of social factors on suicide, such as poverty, debt, addictions, homelessness, abuse, discrimination and social isolation.
The series highlights the importance of addressing social factors as an upstream approach to suicide prevention, which requires a coordinated approach from governments and forms part of national suicide prevention strategies. The research suggests the largest reductions in suicide will be achieved by taking whole-population and whole-of-government approaches to suicide prevention.
University of Melbourne’s Professor Jane Pirkis co-led the series with Professor Keith Hawton from the Centre for Suicide Research in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford.
Professor Pirkis stated, ‘’While we know that there are sadly many causes of what drives someone to suicide, we are calling for a new approach to look at the broader context of what is going on in someone’s life, for example their financial stability and work, exposure to family violence, how connected they are in their community.”
View the ‘A public health approach to suicide prevention’ series.
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