ΠΦΥ -Εκπαίδευση > Αποσπάσματα από τον έντυπο & ηλεκτρονικό τύπο
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Argirios Argiriou:
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Εγγραφή ή Είσοδος
Argirios Argiriou:
13 November 2020
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Εγγραφή ή Είσοδος
Argirios Argiriou:
Suicide
17 June 2021
Key facts
More than 700 000 people die due to suicide every year.
For every suicide there are many more people who attempt suicide. A prior suicide attempt is the single most important risk factor for suicide in the general population.
Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in 15-19-year-olds.
77% of global suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries.
Ingestion of pesticide, hanging and firearms are among the most common methods of suicide globally.
Every year 703 000 people take their own life and there are many more people who attempt suicide. Every suicide is a tragedy that affects families, communities and entire countries and has long-lasting effects on the people left behind. Suicide occurs throughout the lifespan and was the fourth leading cause of death among 15-29 year-olds globally in 2019.
Suicide does not just occur in high-income countries, but is a global phenomenon in all regions of the world. In fact, over 77% of global suicides occurred in low- and middle-income countries in 2019.
Suicide is a serious public health problem; however, suicides are preventable with timely, evidence-based and often low-cost interventions. For national responses to be effective, a comprehensive multisectoral suicide prevention strategy is needed.
Who is at risk?
While the link between suicide and mental disorders (in particular, depression and alcohol use disorders) is well established in high-income countries, many suicides happen impulsively in moments of crisis with a breakdown in the ability to deal with life stresses, such as financial problems, relationship break-up or chronic pain and illness.
In addition, experiencing conflict, disaster, violence, abuse, or loss and a sense of isolation are strongly associated with suicidal behaviour. Suicide rates are also high amongst vulnerable groups who experience discrimination, such as refugees and migrants; indigenous peoples; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex (LGBTI) persons; and prisoners. By far the strongest risk factor for suicide is a previous suicide attempt.
Methods of suicide
It is estimated that around 20% of global suicides are due to pesticide self-poisoning, most of which occur in rural agricultural areas in low- and middle-income countries. Other common methods of suicide are hanging and firearms.
Knowledge of the most commonly used suicide methods is important to devise prevention strategies which have shown to be effective, such as restriction of access to means of suicide.
Prevention and control
Suicides are preventable. There are a number of measures that can be taken at population, sub-population and individual levels to prevent suicide and suicide attempts. LIVE LIFE, WHO’s approach to suicide prevention, recommends the following key effective evidence-based interventions:
limit access to the means of suicide (e.g. pesticides, firearms, certain medications);
interact with the media for responsible reporting of suicide;
foster socio-emotional life skills in adolescents;
early identify, assess, manage and follow up anyone who is affected by suicidal behaviours.,
These need to go hand-in-hand with the following foundational pillars: situation analysis, multisectoral collaboration, awareness raising, capacity building, financing, surveillance and monitoring and evaluation.
Suicide prevention efforts require coordination and collaboration among multiple sectors of society, including the health sector and other sectors such as education, labour, agriculture, business, justice, law, defence, politics, and the media. These efforts must be comprehensive and integrated as no single approach alone can make an impact on an issue as complex as suicide.
Challenges and obstacles
Stigma and taboo
Stigma, particularly surrounding mental disorders and suicide, means many people thinking of taking their own life or who have attempted suicide are not seeking help and are therefore not getting the help they need. The prevention of suicide has not been adequately addressed due to a lack of awareness of suicide as a major public health problem and the taboo in many societies to openly discuss it. To date, only a few countries have included suicide prevention among their health priorities and only 38 countries report having a national suicide prevention strategy.
Raising community awareness and breaking down the taboo is important for countries to make progress in preventing suicide.
Data quality
Globally, the availability and quality of data on suicide and suicide attempts is poor. Only some 80 Member States have good-quality vital registration data that can be used directly to estimate suicide rates. This problem of poor-quality mortality data is not unique to suicide, but given the sensitivity of suicide – and the illegality of suicidal behaviour in some countries – it is likely that under-reporting and misclassification are greater problems for suicide than for most other causes of death.
Improved surveillance and monitoring of suicide and suicide attempts is required for effective suicide prevention strategies. Cross-national differences in the patterns of suicide, and changes in the rates, characteristics and methods of suicide, highlight the need for each country to improve the comprehensiveness, quality and timeliness of their suicide-related data. This includes vital registration of suicide, hospital-based registries of suicide attempts and nationally-representative surveys collecting information about self-reported suicide attempts.
WHO response
WHO recognizes suicide as a public health priority. The first WHO World Suicide Report “Preventing suicide: a global imperative”, published in 2014, aims to increase the awareness of the public health significance of suicide and suicide attempts and to make suicide prevention a high priority on the global public health agenda. It also aims to encourage and support countries to develop or strengthen comprehensive suicide prevention strategies in a multisectoral public health approach.
Suicide is one of the priority conditions in the WHO Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) launched in 2008, which provides evidence-based technical guidance to scale up service provision and care in countries for mental, neurological and substance use disorders. In the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2030, WHO Member States have committed themselves to working towards the global target of reducing the suicide rate in countries by one third by 2030.
In addition, the suicide mortality rate is an indicator of target 3.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals: by 2030, to reduce by one third premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases through prevention and treatment, and promote mental health and well-being.
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Εγγραφή ή Είσοδος
Argirios Argiriou:
21/07/2023 Aljazeera
A silent emergency: The rise in suicides among UK doctors
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Around the world, doctors are two to five times more likely than the general population to die by suicide with female and junior doctors especially high risk. The most recent data from the Office of National Statistics indicate that in the UK alone, 72 medical professionals (including doctors, nurses, therapy professionals, dentists and midwives) took their own lives in 2020 – that is more than one per week. Suicide is also rife among nurses: More than 360 attempted suicide in 2022.
Factors contributing to the high suicide rate within the medical community are well established. Among them are immense, high-pressure workloads, bullying and harassment within a rigidly hierarchical work culture, sleep deprivation, poor support structures and limited resources for employees veering towards burnout.
An unprecedented austerity squeeze on the NHS, which began in 2010 after the government said cuts to public expenditures were needed to resolve the UK’s budget deficit, ramped up pressure on healthcare professionals as hospitals were forced to cut back on front-line services. At roughly the same time, from 2009 to 2019, hospital admissions rose by 20 percent every year while the number of people awaiting treatment increased almost twofold from 2.2 million to 4.3 million.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which further exacerbated the stresses on an already overwhelmed and underfunded healthcare system.
While there isn’t a lot of data to prove or disprove a link between government funding cuts and the working conditions of doctors and nurses, Kevin Teoh, an organisational psychologist who worked on a research paper (PDF) about the mental health of UK doctors, says “there are a few proxy measures we can look at” to measure the impact.
“We see higher stress levels among NHS staff at hospitals where there are also high bed-occupancy rates and emergency admissions. When there’s a decrease in funding to social services and to welfare, the NHS ends up picking up the slack,” he explains.
“With cuts, there are more patients who have been waiting longer, and their conditions may be more complex,” says Gail Kinman, also an occupational health psychologist and Kevin’s co-author on the paper. “There are fewer of you [doctors], less equipment and resources, but you still need to do your job under massive pressure at the level that is expected of you. … Healthcare staff end up shouldering the expectation that they should sacrifice themselves, their health and their personal lives for their patients.”
As a result, she says: “Burnout is happening at a much younger age [among doctors] when it used to happen later in their careers.”
And, she adds: “They may not necessarily recognise the symptoms or know how to get support.”
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Εγγραφή ή Είσοδος
Argirios Argiriou:
08/09/2023 ertnews
Πάνω από 500 άνθρωποι αυτοκτονούν κάθε χρόνο στην Ελλάδα
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