Recommendations for suicide preventive efforts at a population level (RESPI)
The National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill-Health (NASP) has developed a knowledge base that presents evidence-based interventions at a population level to decrease suicide. It also describes prerequisites that are essential for effective suicide preventive work.
The recommended evidence-based interventions presented on the RESPI website are based on systematic literature reviews which were performed by NASP.
This website aims to support relevant stakeholders to be able to make well-founded decisions and set priorities among various efforts to decrease suicide in Sweden. The target group for the website is wide and includes everything from authorities to regional or municipality entities, as well as private companies and Non-governmental organization.
Our goal was to assess the evidence for all suicide prevention efforts that have been evaluated with proper scientific methods. The literature search only included studies that have evaluated population-oriented efforts with suicide or suicide attempts as an outcome measure. The consequence of this limitation is that the recommendations do not include potentially relevant interventions (e.g. interventions that decrease the prevalence of depression) unless they were evaluated using suicide or suicide attempts as outcome measures. Specific therapeutic or pharmacological efforts were also not included, even if they have been evaluated using suicide and suicide attempts. The reason only population-oriented efforts were presented is because we consider suicide as a societal issue that the health care system cannot tackle on its’ own. The preventive work also requires that other stakeholders in society get involved and take responsibility.