An order
In July 2023, the German Bundestag commissioned the BMG to “present to the Bundestag a concept by January 31, 2024 on how quickly – for example with funds from the National Prevention Plan – existing suicide prevention structures and offers can be supported” and by March 30, 2024 ” “To present a draft law and a strategy for suicide prevention to the Bundestag, which will coordinate the measures and actors and ensure long-term and timely implementation.”
Karl Lauterbach missed the first appointment. Today he presented the commissioned concept. It has already been declared a “National Suicide Prevention Strategy”.
Data
Karl Lauterbach embedded it in an overly gloomy assessment of the last few years. When presenting the strategy he said:
“The number of suicides in Germany has not decreased for a good 20 years.”
He was probably referring to a second paper published on this occasion today by the BMG with the title “Implementation strategy for suicide prevention in Germany”, which documents key data in a summarized form and is co-signed by Prof. Bschor, the coordinator of the government commission for hospital care. It says that the number of suicides has fluctuated around 10,000 in recent years. That’s true, but if you leave the financial crisis of 2008 and the Corona crisis aside, the numbers definitely fell by a good 18% between 2000 and 2019, by 25% for women and 16% for men %.
The decline shows that we are not dealing with an unchangeable event, the stagnation of the last few years shows that there is a need for action, and the rise in numbers in the wake of the crises underlines this once again.
actions
A national suicide prevention strategy in Germany is long overdue, also with a view to other countries, so the presentation of the strategy paper is to be welcomed. Accordingly, “a central, nationwide coordination center for suicide prevention” should be set up. According to the BMG, it should
“• Affected people, their relatives and specialists provide information on the topic via a nationwide website with in-depth information on offers of help and suicide prevention offers,
• Initiate measures to destigmatize mental illnesses and to remove taboos around the topics of dying, death and suicide, in the medium term also through an awareness campaign,
• Develop model training courses for healthcare and nursing professionals in order to make them even more aware of the topic and to train them in how to deal with people at risk and to put them in a better position to effectively refer them to further help or therapy offers if necessary ,
• Working with the states to develop a concept for establishing a central crisis service emergency number. This is intended to direct those seeking help directly to the help offered by the states and municipalities,
• Set up a telephone and online consultation service for relatives and specialists
• and expand the monitoring of suicide attempts and suicides.In addition, it is recommended to significantly expand “method-limiting” measures, i.e. restricting access to means and places for a suicide attempt, and to consider setting up a pseudonymized suicide register.”
Money
These are, in principle, sensible measures. However, the Finance Ministry’s financial savings requirements also seem to be casting a shadow on this project. Cost-intensive measures remain vague in the “National Suicide Prevention Strategy”. For example, while the traffic light coalition agreement clearly stated “We are expanding psychiatric emergency and crisis care across the board”, the “National Suicide Prevention Strategy” only contains a non-binding declaration of intent: “The aim is to find solutions together with the states “to improve psychiatric emergency and crisis care and to implement this in the future as part of the further development of emergency care in Germany.”
It would be desirable if there were structures similar to those in Bavaria across the country. In recent years, Bavaria has established 24-hour crisis services on a legal basis, which can also go on site with mobile teams if necessary. Just a uniform telephone number is not enough.