Using real-time suicide monitoring systems to inform policy and practice.

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, Vol 44(6), 2023, 445-450; doi:10.1027/0227-5910/a000931Many countries have now established, or are establishing, suicide monitoring systems (Baran et al., 2021). These systems typically use data from police reports and death certificates to identify suspected suicides, with key information about the deceased entered into a register soon after death. Information entered into the register may include the location of death and the deceased’s place of residence, the geocoordinates of these locations, the age and sex of the deceased, and information about the method of suicide. Because information is entered soon after death, these registers act as real-time or near real-time surveillance systems. Real-time suicide registers resolve the problem of timeliness that has hampered the use of vital statistics systems for suicide monitoring. Vital statistics are usually based on an investigation by a coroner, medical examiner, or other authority. These investigations are often lengthy – in Australia, it takes between 12 and 18 months for a determination by a coroner – meaning these data are too old to be used for responding to increases in suicide rates, increases at specific locations, or increases by emerging suicide methods. As countries establish real-time suicide registers, there is now the potential to use these data sets to create opportunities for suicide prevention that have not previously existed. Specific...
Source: Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research