Conference Agenda

A Danish national plan for prevention of suicidal behaviour has been developed in Danish Health Agency and it was endorsed by the ministry of health and funded with 10 million EUROS each year from 2024 and onwards.

The distinction between universal, selective and indicated prevention was used for development of the plan, and the main focus was on indicated prevention.

Proposed interventions in the action plan were supported by a thorough mapping of risk groups and risk situations. Register-based studies have helped us to identify risk groups. Further reductions in suicide could be achieved through targeted interventions for selected risk groups. Most importantly risk groups include people at imminent risk of suicidal behaviour such as people calling help-lines because of suicidal thoughts, people recently discharged from psychiatric hospital or sent home from psychiatric emergency, and people who were treated after suicide attempt. Analyses of suicide rates following hospital contacts with deliberate self-harm have consistently shown increased risk of suicide. Especially the first months after deliberate self-harm is associated with very high risk. Programs for bringing down this high risk inspired our recommendations.

A professional telephone line will be established in 2026, and this line can formally refer callers to emergency services and collaborate with already existing services about individual callers. Psychiatric emergency outreach is planned to be disseminated all over Denmark. LifeLine in Denmark will get a higher level of permanent state funding.

The exact implementation of the plan was decided in spring 2024. The plan will be monitored by a national surveillance council. Monitoring will include suicides and suicide attempts first weeks after discharge, proportion with contact to mental health services shortly after discharge and shortly after hospital treated suicide attempt. Results from 2024 will be presented

Introduction

Lived/living-experience is increasingly prioritised in suicide prevention. Government policies are a key arena where knowledge and evidence inform national approaches to suicide. Conventionally, quantitative data and clinical research have been prioritised as evidence in these policies. Using Carol Bacchi’s post-structuralist ‘What’s The Problem Represented To Be’ (WPR) approach, we build upon previous work to critically analyse the UK’s four current national suicide prevention policies to examine their use of evidence, whether/how lived/living-experience is included, and their resulting constructions of ‘prevention’.

Methods

Using the qualitative WPR approach, we conducted in-depth readings of the four national suicide prevention policies and action plans using the analytic questions established by Bacchi – notably ‘How has this representation of the problem come about?’, and ‘What effects are produced by this representation?’

Results

While a shift towards lived/living-experience inclusion has occurred in some national policies, it has been uneven. Northern Ireland’s policy remains reliant upon epidemiological data and clinical research, recognising lived/living-experience only in relation to bereaved people. Although England consulted lived/living-experience, associated actions retain a prioritisation on surveillance and clinical research. Wales and Scotland, however, show a shift in action: Wales proposes a lived-experience advisory group alongside surveillance, while Scotland prioritises its Lived/Living-Experience Panel and Youth Advisory Group.

Conclusion

There has been a shift in the evidence base of suicide prevention policy in the UK. Where epidemiological and clinical evidence dominate, suicide prevention continues to be addressed through detection, monitoring, and medical intervention. This limits the ability of policy to make meaningful change to the lives of those experiencing or at risk of suicidality. In Scotland and Wales, we identify greater lived-experience inclusion. However, inclusion is limited – often consulted over local action and branding, but with limited agenda setting power. Further work is needed to understand the role of lived/living-experience in policy making.

The World Health Organization has emphasized that responses to suicide must go beyond individual-level prevention and be advanced as a whole-of-society approach encompassing social systems, public policy, and communities. Japan represents a distinctive international case in which suicide countermeasures are promoted as comprehensive societal action grounded in a legal framework.

In Japan, the Basic Act on Suicide Countermeasures was enacted in 2006, redefining suicide not as an individual issue but as a social problem shaped by factors such as employment, education, family relationships, social isolation, and access to support. Based on this Act, comprehensive suicide countermeasures have been developed through a “three-level interconnected model” that links individual-level support, municipality-based cross-sectoral implementation, and national-level policy coordination. This framework has evolved through major legislative revisions in 2016 and 2025. The 2016 revision strengthened the responsibilities and implementation capacity of local governments in formulating and executing suicide countermeasure plans, institutionalizing accountability and cross-sectoral collaboration at the municipal level. The 2025 revision further expanded the framework, placing particular emphasis on strengthening countermeasures for students suicide and responding to emerging social environments, including the use of generative AI.

In the early 2000s, Japan recorded more than 30,000 suicide deaths annually. While causal attribution must be approached with caution, suicide deaths have declined substantially as comprehensive, three-level suicide countermeasures have been implemented, and it has become certain that the number will fall below 20,000 for the first time in 2025. This long-term downward trend suggests that system-oriented social policy approaches may play an important role in reducing suicide risk at the population level.

This presentation examines how suicide countermeasures in Japan have been designed, governed, and implemented as an integrated social system. The Japanese case offers transferable insights into how legal frameworks and multi-level governance can be mobilized to advance suicide countermeasures as social policy.

In 2025, Australia’s National Suicide Prevention Office (NSPO) and the Australian Government launched the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, outlining a model of an effective suicide prevention system. The National Suicide Prevention Outcomes Framework (Outcomes Framework) will use this model to measure progress in suicide prevention, improving understanding of whether suicide prevention efforts are safe and effective. The Outcomes Framework seeks to leverage the strengths and insights from both qualitative and quantitative data by adopting a mixed-methods approach.

In an exciting collaboration between government and academia, the NSPO and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) have partnered with the University of New England (UNE) to establish the mixed-methods approach for the Outcomes Framework. With the AIHW tasked with leading the quantitative arm, the research team from UNE is developing a robust, transparent, and replicable approach to sourcing and utilising qualitative data to inform the Outcomes Framework. The approach, underpinned by person-centred and trauma-informed principles, will ensure that the voices of people disproportionately impacted by suicide are included and that the Outcomes Framework is relevant and meaningful.

This presentation will outline the qualitative approach adopted for the Outcomes Framework and share preliminary insights from the lessons learnt so far. This will include the development of our CoLab, a group of 14 highly specialised individuals with lived and living experiences of those disproportionally impacted by suicide and qualitative methods, the development and testing of concepts in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy within existing large qualitative data sets for understanding change in relation to routinely collected national quantitative data and emerging frameworks for qualitative data custodianship.

Introduction: Currently, 47 countries are known to have a national suicide prevention strategy. However, the number of countries with a completed evaluation of the effectiveness of a national suicide prevention strategy or action plan is limited. The aim of this presentation is to provide an update of national suicide prevention strategies and outcomes of available evaluations.

Method: A scoping review was conducted, involving both primary studies and systematic reviews conducted between 2000 and June 2025.

Results: Evaluations of national suicide prevention strategies reveal mixed outcomes in terms of impacts on suicide and non-fatal self-harm. In terms of explaining the variable outcomes of strategy evaluations, it may take longer than anticipated to show an effect, or to identify an effect only in certain subgroups, including intensity and consolidation of actions and interventions. Despite the variation in components, no statistically significant associations were found between specific aspects/components of national suicide prevention strategies and changes in suicide mortality, and more likely point in the direction of synergistic effects, and implementation research was often lacking. Whilst a country’s suicide rate represents a key indicator to guide suicide prevention priorities and to determine impacts of suicide prevention programmes, many countries face the challenge of delays relating to officially published suicide figures and underreporting.

Conclusion: In addition to reductions in suicide, other outcome indicators need to be considered, such as secondary or in intermediate outcome indicators, including non-fatal self-harm, awareness of suicide risk factors, access to quality health care, access to lethal means of suicide, and numbers of people hospitalized after an act of self-harm. Lack of information as to whether specific actions and interventions had been implemented or, if implemented, the quality, scale, intensity, completeness, and timing of the implementation process should also be considered.

Introduction
Suicidal behaviour remains a major public health challenge worldwide, prompting the implementation of national suicide prevention strategies that combine multiple interventions across public, clinical, and policy domains. However, evidence regarding the effectiveness of these commonly implemented interventions remains fragmented. The present umbrella review systematically synthesises evidence from existing reviews and meta-analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions frequently included in national suicide prevention strategies, and to identify the mechanisms through which these interventions exert their effects.

Methods
We systematically searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Epistemonikos, and Google Scholar (2015–2025) for umbrella reviews, systematic reviews, rapid reviews, integrative reviews, and meta-analyses evaluating interventions commonly implemented in national suicide prevention strategies aimed at reducing suicide, attempted suicide, or self-harm. Quality was assessed with AMSTAR-2, with findings narratively synthesised.

Results
Preliminary mapping of reviews suggests beneficial effects for a range of interventions commonly included in national suicide prevention strategies, including means restriction approaches (e.g., barriers at hotspots; restricting access to toxic substances) and clinical/aftercare interventions (e.g., CBT/DBT; brief post-discharge contact). Across other strategy components (e.g., public awareness activities, media guideline initiatives, telephone-based services), review findings are often heterogeneous and context-dependent, with effects varying by outcome, setting, and study design. Findings are preliminary and will be updated following completion of our review in Summer 2026.

Conclusions
Taken together, the last decade of review-level evidence suggests that national strategies draw on components with varying degrees of empirical support, with promising signals for a subset of structural and care-continuity interventions and more heterogeneous findings for several widely implemented programmatic components. These patterns can support policymakers in prioritising scalable interventions and targeting future evaluation toward strategy elements with uncertain or inconsistent evidence base.