Policy worthwhile if one life saved

Jim Anderton has personal experience of suicide after the death of a daughter.

If the newly released New Zealand Suicide Prevention Strategy saves just one life it will have been time and money well spent, Associate Health Minister Jim Anderton says.

the strategy, unveiled yesterday, is a step towards a national plan to try to lower a suicide toll which sees more New Zealanders die each year than die on the nation's roads.

With suicide generally being a personal decision carried out in private, Mr Anderton admitted it would be difficult to tell if public policy documents such as the 1998 Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy and the newly released plan actually worked.

"All you do know is that doing nothing about 500 New Zealanders killing themselves every year doesn't seem much of an option, so you have to do something."

Suicide rates had decreased around 15 per cent since their peak in 1998 but more work could and should be done to reduce them still further, Mr Anderton said.

The plan set out seven goals for a national approach to suicide:

* Promote mental health and wellbeing and prevent mental health problems
* Improve the care of people who are experiencing mental disorders associated with suicidal behaviour
* Improve the care of people who make non-fatal suicide attempts
* Reduce access to the means of suicide
* Promote the safe reporting and portrayal of suicidal behaviour by the media
* Support families/whanau, friends and others affected by suicide or suicide attempts.
* Expand the evidence about rates, causes and effective interventions.

The strategy would be relevant to several other policy areas such as mental health, alcohol and drug use, child abuse and neglect, aged care, unemployment, law and order and education.

"It is imperative ... that all initiatives are carefully developed, informed by evidence and best practice, assessed for safety issues, and are comprehensively evaluated to ensure that they make a positive difference and do not have any unintended outcomes," the strategy said.

Mr Anderton has personal experience of suicide, after the death of a daughter.

While that meant he understood the grief families faced and the endless repercussions of suicide, that did not make him an expert, he said at Parliament yesterday.

"Half the time those of us who have been affected by it don't even know why or how ourselves and if we were put in the same situation again we would be in no better position than we were then to do anything about it," Mr Anderton said.

New Zealanders were world-leaders in suicide research, and the more knowledge that could be gathered on the problem the more effective the country's suicide prevention efforts would be, Mr Anderton said.

A sad toll

* Each year about 500 New Zealanders commit suicide. About 2500 are hospitalised after suicide attempts.

* It is the second most common cause of death for 15-24-year-olds.

* About 80 per cent are 25 or older.

* More men die than women, but more women are hospitalised after suicide attempts.

* Maori men have a higher rate than non-Maori. Maori women have a much higher rate of hospitalisation than any other group.

Source: Suicide Prevention Strategy 2006-2016.