CONTEMPORARY PRINCIPLES OF SUICIDE PREVENTION

Abstract

CONCLUSION: There is a lot of evidence that suicide is preventable. It is known that only 28 coun tries in the world have national suicide prevention strategies and Serbia is not one of them. INTRODUCTION: Suicide remains a significant public health problem worldwide. This study is aimed at analyzing and presenting contemporary methods in suicide prevention in the world as well as at identifying specific risk groups and risk factors in order to explain their importance. in suicide prevention. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The literature search covered electronic databases PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus. In order to select the relevant articles, the authors searched for the combination of key-words which included the following medical subject heading terms (suicide or suicide ideation or attempted) and (prevention or risk factors) and (man or elders or mental disorders). Data analysis covered meta-analyses, systematic reviews and original scientific papers with different characteristics of suicide preventions, risk factors and risk groups. RESULTS: Worldwide evidence-based interventions for suicide prevention are divided in universal, selective and indicated interventions. Restricted approach to various methods of committing suicide as well as pharmacotherapy contributes to a lower suicide rate. Suicide risk factors can be categorized as proximal and distal. The following groups are at highest risk of committing suicide: males. older persons and persons with registered psychiatric disorders.