Evaluation of suicide prevention: a European approach

Suicide is a major cause of mortality across the world, and so evaluation of suicide prevention is essential to inform policy and practice, and to save lives. However, there are major methodological difficulties in the evaluation of suicide prevention, including a lack of consensus on definitions, lack of specification of interventions, and the difficulties of field research (including problems of randomization, heterogeneity in the extent of treatment implementation, and treatment contamination), and infrastructure difficulties posed by the need for large sample sizes and longitudinal studies. There is a need to develop a systematic architecture of suicide research across the whole of Europe which can obtain added value from a multiple country approach. This should include consideration of the role of research funding agencies, the scope for multiple country projects, the investment in young researchers, investment in suicide research centres, and the need to acknowledge the complexity of multi-axial causation and hence of effective prevention.