Suicide prevention: a task for public health and a role for public health ethics

Abstract

Suicide is primarily conceptualised as an event with causes relating to individual lives. However, we argue that it is impor tant not to lose sight of the fact that not all causes of suicide are related simply to individual action and circumstances. Clear evidence exists for some risk factors for suicide being visable at the population level or related to membership of various social groups. Strategies to prevent suicide, therefore, ought to focus on such causes (eg. injustice, discrimination, mental illness in general), not just on causes relating to individuals. In turn, this means that suicide prevention should not merely focus on trying to reduce access to the means of suicide by individuals (eg. shotguns in rural areas, pesticides in India, means of strangulation in prisons etc) but should expand to include such things as socio‐economic determinants and other population influences on mental health. We argue that suicide ought to be thought of as being, in an impor tant sense, a public health problem, and that the resources of public health ethics are one impor tant element in seeking to address this impor tant issue.

Citation

Dawson, A. and Silva, D. (2009), "Suicide prevention: a task for public health and a role for public health ethics", Journal of Public Mental Health, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 4-6. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465729200900015