Begoña Fernández |
Madrid (EFE).- The suicide trend has continued to rise for three years and prevention plans have not arrived, according to the Stop Suicides platform, which claims access to therapy and reports waiting lists of up to eight months for access a psychiatrist or a public health psychologist.
“A person with autolytic ideas cannot wait months to be treated by a professional,” the platform’s spokesperson, Román Reyes, explains to EFE, who insists that suicide “touches everyone” and “mental health cannot be converted into in luxury, with consultations of 60-70 euros for an hour of therapy in private healthcare.”
World Suicide Prevention Day
On the occasion of World Suicide Prevention Day this Sunday, the platform’s spokesperson also denounces that very rapid discharges occur in psychiatric admissions without the patient having resolved their problem, and warns that “the three months after a attempt are critical for the repetition of the attempt.”
He also misses more prevention campaigns and remembers that the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT) thanks to these strategies achieved a significant reduction in fatal accidents: “Why doesn’t that happen with suicide?”
And he emphasizes that today completed suicides multiply the number of deaths in traffic accidents by four.
Reyes assures that in countries with prevention plans suicide figures are decreasing and regrets that in Spain there has been “a make-up” of this public health problem.
In his opinion, the launch by Health of the 024 telephone number for attention to suicidal behavior, in May 2022, “is not enough” since emergencies are derived from there to 112, “where there is no specific training for the sanitary”.
On the occasion of World Suicide Day, Stop Suicides takes to the streets this Sunday in Madrid under the slogan “For a prevention plan.”
At the end of the march, the platform will read a manifesto, signed by thirty entities, which calls for raising awareness and training the population, promoting Primary Care in mental health, creating protocols in communities, a behavioral observatory suicide and introduce the topic of suicide in undergraduate studies.
Prevention talks in schools: kids don’t ask for help
Javier Jiménez never thought that suicide would be close to his heart, but one day the phone rang and he was told that his 20-year-old daughter had taken her own life.
Three years later, she created, in tribute to her daughter, the Sara Jiménez Association in order to work for prevention, and give talks in Primary and Secondary schools because “kids talk among themselves about suicide, everyone knows someone who is.” going through a very bad time, but it is very difficult for them to ask for help.”
In this prevention work, the association, which has a team of three psychologists and a psychiatrist, also travels to cultural or municipal centers, “and to all those places where it can be useful.”
Jiménez affirms that in practically one hundred percent of the schools he attends problems of attempted suicide are detected, and sometimes, if the school management considers it, the training is extended to teachers because we must eradicate the idea that ” “This is kid stuff.”
The railing: “No one in Health works for prevention”
From the La Barandilla association, its director José Manuel Dolader, perceives an upward trend in suicides so far in 2023 and warns that the curve will only bend with a national prevention plan, which will allow the numbers to improve in 2024.
Dolader regrets that with 4,097 deaths committed in 2022 by suicide, 2.3% more than a year before, “no one in the Ministry of Health works for prevention” and, given this gap, it is the communities that develop specific programs.
For this expert, the creation of “a general direction would help analyze why people commit suicide.”
The director of La Barandilla links the increase in suicides to the general unrest and tension in society. A tension, he says, that is transferred to all areas, especially to social networks and the younger group. In fact, suicides in those under 20 years of age (84 in 2022) were 12% more than a year before.
La Barandilla, which has been demanding a national plan since 2015, created in 2018 a help line for people with suicidal ideation (911 385 385) that is public, free and attended by professionals, from which they provide psychological help for a minimum of three months.
