Health Plans for Suicide Prevention in Spain: A Descriptive Analysis of the Published Documents.

Teresa Sufrate-Sorzano,Elena Jiménez-Ramón,Iván Santolalla-Arnedo,Raúl Júarez-Vela,María Elena Garrote-Cámara,Vicente Gea-Caballero,Angela Durante

doi:10.3390/nursrep12010009

Abstract

The number of deaths by suicide worldwide each year is more than 800,000 people, which is equivalent to one death every 40 seconds. Suicide prevention has been listed by the World Health Organisation as a global imperative and has become a priority for global public health. This descriptive study describes and compares the intervention components included in the suicide prevention plans in the different provinces of Spain. We analysed the published documents through an extensive literature search and summarised the findings using descriptive content analysis. The search was carried out through the official websites of the government and health departments of each province in addition to consulting other official digital platforms such as the National Suicide Observatory, the World Health Organisation and the National Institute of Statistics. The results show the most relevant differences between the prevention plans, revealing that although all the activities included were related to the health sector, not all of them include prevention aimed at the general population level. We conclude that there is a lack of interventions related to the application of universal prevention, while selective and indicated prevention are the most developed tools in Spain.

Highlights

Accepted: 4 February 2022Suicide is a serious health problem affecting people of all ages and in all countries.Suicide prevention, listed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a global imperative, has grown in importance in recent years to become a priority task in global public health [1]
Almost 30% of the communities include the dissemination of information related to suicide prevention, but not all of them have the same final objectives
The aim of this review is to describe and compare the interventions described in the suicide prevention plans of the Spanish provinces by comparing the proposed objectives and categorising their interventions

Summary

Introduction

Accepted: 4 February 2022Suicide is a serious health problem affecting people of all ages and in all countries.Suicide prevention, listed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a global imperative, has grown in importance in recent years to become a priority task in global public health [1]. Suicide death rates are high, with an estimated 800,000 deaths by suicide each year Preventing these deaths is of paramount importance, as is preventing self-injurious behaviour and suicide attempts, as they are the main risk factor for suicide [2]. For all these reasons, prevention measures have been increased and strengthened in recent years in line with WHO guidelines. Prevention measures have been increased and strengthened in recent years in line with WHO guidelines This organisation proposed to carry out global preventive work with the aim of reducing the suicide rate by 10% by 2020, highlighting the importance of working on the prevention and management of suicidal behaviour with the use of universal, selective and indicated tools [1]

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Conclusion