Summary

• Suicide is the thirteenth leading cause of death worldwide, with about 1 million deaths every year due to self-inflicted violence.
• In people aged 15 to 44 years, self-inflicted injury is the fourth leading cause of death and the sixth leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, making suicide a significant public health concern.
• There are 5 components to suicide: ideation, intent, plan, access to lethal means, and history of past suicide attempts.
• Suicide risk management refers to the identification, assessment, and treatment of a person exhibiting suicidal behaviour (includes death by suicide, suicide attempt, and suicidal ideation).
• Key risk factors for suicide include previous suicide attempt, current suicidal plan or ideation, and history of mental illness (most commonly major depressive disorder and substance abuse).
• Effective treatment of mental disorder plays an important role in suicide prevention. Other important prevention strategies are suicide risk screening in primary care, mental health education for primary care physicians and gatekeepers, means restriction, and media interventions. Numerous popular community-based interventions (such as school programmes) have not demonstrated benefit in suicide rate reduction.