Welfare Reform on the Web (September 2007): Mental health services - overseas

Might the decrease in suicide rates in France be due to regional prevention programmes?

M.M. Bellanger, A. Jourdain and A. Batt-Moillo

Social Science and Medicine, vol. 65, 2007, p. 431-441

In France, recognition of suicide as a major public health problem in the 1990s led to the implementation of regional prevention programmes in 11 areas. Suicide mortality rates decreased in France from 1996 to 1999, and a difference was observed between the 11 regions which implemented suicide prevention programmes and the 11 others which did not. The former regions showed a sharper decrease in their suicide mortality rates than the latter, but it is unclear whether the prevention programmes definitely had a positive effect.