Suicide prevention in Belgium: from scientific field to politics

In Belgium, suicide is still a public health problem. Until recently, there was no real public policy of prevention. However, it has been demonstrated that for injury prevention, actors must have access to relevant and structured informations in order to choose the most efficient actions to (try to) solve the problem. The objective of our research was to establish a political document including propositions for priority actions that could help decision making. This work is based on informations from scientific studies and from field experiences. The first step was the elaboration of a conceptual framework of the suicidal process. At the same time, a register of active field workers has been established in order to make a link between their actions and the conceptual framework. This step led us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of prevention in our country. We noted that many positive actions were conducted but there was usually no link between them nor between actors, neither between the different levels of government. Our results have been sent to the Belgian parliament and a resolution aiming at defining suicide as a public health priority was adopted. This resolution also set the necessity of the elaboration of a global plan to coordinate the actions of the different actors. The approach followed as well as the interactions between deputies and researchers will be described