Switzerland has one of the world's highest youth
suicide rates. A conference on preventing suicide among young people is
being held in Geneva, a city which has had dramatic success in reducing
its suicide rate.
Saving youngsters from suicide
A taboo still remains around the issue of suicide. But
there is a pressing need to address it, since, in Switzerland, as in
many western countries, suicide is the main cause of death among young
people.
The three-day international gathering, which will be
attended by Swiss Interior Minister Ruth Dreifuss and French Health
Minister Bernard Kouchner, has been jointly organised by the Children
Action charity and Geneva’s University Hospital.
“The simple message is that suicide prevention is
possible. Nobody believed it five years ago,” says Maja Perret-Catipovic,
the psychologist in charge of the hospital’s suicide prevention and
research unit.
Talk and listen
And the most effective method of suicide prevention?
“Talk about it. And listen to the reasons,” Perret-Catipovic told
swissinfo.
While the suicide rate in Switzerland among 15-24
year-olds has remained stubbornly among the highest in Europe, in Geneva
it has fallen dramatically. In the past 25 years, the figure has dropped
from 30.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants to just 8.8 cases.
Little wonder, then, that Geneva’s relatively simple
system has attracted plaudits abroad, and been emulated in parts of
France.
The decline in the number of suicides has been
especially marked in the past four years, since the creation of the
suicide prevention and research unit, and a special inpatient unit for
young people at risk.
Those in charge of these centres say there are many
complex factors at play, but key aspects in Geneva’s success have been
giving young people a forum in which to talk about the problems that
might drive them to try to take their own lives, and giving parents,
teachers and friends the mechanism to act should a young person they
know be at risk.
Gay suicide rate
A significant proportion of those who do attempt
suicide are gay. A study last year by the Canton Vaud University
Hospital in Lausanne concluded that homosexual males are eight times
more likely to try to take their own life than heterosexual ones. It
found that a quarter of all gay men between the ages of 16 and 25 had
made at least one attempt at suicide.
Studies from elsewhere suggest homosexuality is not a
factor in suicide rates. And the Geneva psychologists say that other
factors – depression, drug abuse, family environment, eating disorders,
a family history of suicide, dropping out of school and so on – are
equally important.
But given the Lausanne findings, what has disturbed
Perret-Catipovic is the negligible number of homosexuals coming to her
unit for help.
It’s estimated that only around one in four of young
people attempting suicide ends up in hospital, and one of the key
subjects at this No Suicide conference is how to target those who have
received no medical care and advice.
“We need to find ways to get in touch with all those
young people in the general population who are at risk,” says François
Ladame, the head of the special unit for suicidal adolescents at the
University Hospital.
Network
Given its small staff, the way the Geneva system has
achieved its success has been to create a network - including parents,
teachers, sports instructors and others who come into contact with
adolescents — so that the danger signs can be recognised and acted upon
as quickly as possible.
This is especially important given the reluctance of
young people to seek the help of health care professionally — especially
psychologists, who are powerless to act unless help is sought.
“It’s better to help the parents learn how to cope
with a suicidal child than waiting for the child to turn up in the
emergency ward,” Perret-Catipovic says.
She says it is important to take the warning signs
seriously. It is no good friends and family telling a suicidal youngster
to snap out of it, assuring them that all will be fine tomorrow: “That
kind of advice is only useful to the person giving it, not to the person
who needs it,” she says.
Just two full time workers and one part timer run the
Geneva suicide prevention unit, and as such it is relatively cheap to
fund. Even so, it would have struggled to get off the ground without a
private foundation providing half the money.
“I would like our political authorities to acknowledge
that not enough has been done to prevent youth suicide,” Ladame says.
The government has achieved impressive results by directing money at
other major problems, such as drug abuse, AIDS and the prevention of
road traffic accidents
“If they made the same kind of money available, we
would be in a better position to fight this problem,” he says.
by Roy Probert
19 June 2003
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=920000
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