This article reviews the current approach to suicide prevention in Australia, which is focused on medical model and argues the need for shifting the approach to social model. The new situational approach should focus on social determinants and consider the risk factors such as aboriginality, unemployment, financial distress and relationship breakdown alongside metal illness. The new approach has been successful in many local interventions. For example, The Shed in Mt Druitt, Sydney is partnering with twenty-eight local organisations to address the social determinants to reduce the suicide rate.
This article contends that the prevention of suicide, particularly in Australia, needs to be re-imagined, by expanding a medical/crisis response to take into account social factors that contribute to the incidence of suicide and suicidal ideation. The particular area of unemployment/underemployment provides one such example of the social determinants of suicide, and argues that the nuances of gender and Aboriginality need also to be accounted for in research and program delivery. This analysis has been dubbed the ‘Situational Approach to Suicide Prevention’.
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