Canada suicide prevention efforts lagging, experts say.

international spotlight on suicide, Canada still doesn’t have a national strategy for suicide prevention. More than one million people around the world die by suicide each year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Suicide is also one of the top 10 leading causes of death in Canada, accounting for some 4000 deaths annually. Canadian experts were among the first to call attention to suicide as an international public health issue, but prevention efforts closer to home have since stalled in jurisdictional quagmires. “We were world leaders when Canada hosted its first international conference on suicide prevention in 1979. Within a year, we had a federally-funded task force on the issue,” says Richard Ramsay, president of LivingWorks, an international suicide intervention training company based in Calgary, Alberta. “But in the seven years it took for that task force to report back, other countries had already implemented national strategies.” Canada also contributed expertise and tax dollars in 1995 to draft the United Nations’ guidelines for implementing national suicide prevention strategies. Crafted in Alberta, the UN initiative set out guidelines for establishing government policy, measurable objectives and best practices for implementation and evaluation. Some countries, such as Australia, Scotland and the United States, subsequently used the document as a blueprint in developing national strategies and programs for suicide prevention. Yet, Canada has failed to take the advice. “The federal government never adopted the guidelines. They’ve never even gone on the record to say suicide is a national public health issue,” says Marion Cooper, past president of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. “That’s damaging to people who’ve been bereaved by suicide, to people who struggle with thoughts of suicide, because it adds to the shame and silence that already surround the issue.” Finland, Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand were among the first to implement national suicide prevention strategies in the 1980s and 90s. They’ve since been joined by England, the US, Denmark, Germany and Scotland, among others. National suicide prevention strategies differ in the target groups emphasized. For example, Australia’s first national strategy and New Zealand’s strategy primarily address the needs of young people, while Finland, Norway, Sweden and Australia’s current national strategies have a broader focus on all age groups (www.health.gov.au /internet/main/publishing.nsf/content /1D2B4E895BCD429ECA2572290