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Guyana gets $6M for suicide prevention

May 30, 2009 News

As the Ministry of Health struggles to deal with the increase in the number of suicide cases in the country, the Ministry from June 1 to June 5, will work along with Dalhousie University in Canada, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) to intensify its efforts to build the mental health capacity in Guyana.
Health Canada and PAHO have granted the Ministry of Health $6M for a one – year Suicide Prevention Programme.
During these five days, there will be three activities happening simultaneously. There will be an intense four-day legislation drafting for Mental Health, commencing June 1 to June 4, with the aim to sensitize key stakeholders on the importance of mental health legislation, to establish a working group to assist with the drafting of new mental health legislation and to complete a background paper of existing human rights and other relevant legislation to inform the development of modern mental health legislation.
There will also be a substance abuse advance training workshop in Structured Relapse Prevention and Motivational Interviewing from June 1 to June 5, which aims to further develop and strengthen an integrated, comprehensive, evidence-based treatment and rehabilitation programme.
The Ministry of Health noted, that the development of appropriate treatment and rehabilitation services ,will require a comprehensive, integrated and co-ordinated multi-sectoral approach and will entail the enhancement and expansion of existing programmes, as well as the development of new programmes.  Treatment and rehabilitation services will include detoxification, primary care, supportive recovery and residential care services.  Implementation of evidenced-based practices for the assessment and treatment of substance abuse disorders, will require the embedding of new skills into existing health providers and the training of front-line health and social service workers in substance abuse assessment skills and substance abuse counseling skills. It was also noted that a suicide prevention workshop will commence on June 2 to June 4, with the objective of the Adaptation of the Suicide Follow-Back Methodology to the Guyana context and training of members of the Ministry of Health’s surveillance team and local mental health specialists in the methodology.
Its purpose, will be to develop the capacity to understand suicide and suicide behaviours in Guyana, by enhancing the capacity for mental health research in Guyana, establishing a methodology to research the biological, psychological and social factors that contribute to suicide deaths and suicide behaviour in Guyana and developing capacity to administer structured psychiatric interviews.
These three activities, address the components of the Mental Health Strategy, which includes the integration of mental health care within all levels of formal and informal health care services, to develop a National Suicide Prevention Strategy and to revise the current Mental Health legislation of Guyana to meeting international and PAHO/WHO standards.
According to the World Health Organization almost 900,000 people worldwide die by suicide every year: a “global” mortality rate of 16 per 100,000 or one death every 40 seconds. Health Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, said that in the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60 per cent worldwide.
“Suicide is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 years (both sexes); these figures do not include suicide attempts up to 20 times more frequent than completed suicide.”
He explained that worldwide, the prevention of suicide has not been adequately addressed, due basically a lack of awareness of suicide as a major problem and the taboo in many societies to discuss openly about it. He pointed out that reliability of suicide certification and reporting is an issue in great need of improvement.

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