Park Sang-hoon (Head of Governance Group) et al. have alleged that proactive government effects to decrease the suicide rate have not shown significant effectives although a variety of indicatives aimed at suicide prevention have implemented, commencing from 5-year comprehensive plan (I) led by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2004, and it is because that the limitations in existing solutions focusing on suicide prevention and alleviation of suicidal risk. As they pointed out, it is wrong to understand the suicide only as a social maladjustment or to leave the bereaved family feeling guilty; reform of the existing administrative-limited approach is demanded.
According to Park’s opinion, approach to risk factors at the individual level has its limitations – we should focus on “social suicide rate” rather than vulnerable individuals. Suicide rates are defined as a representative social indicators from which the degree of “society capability” can read, i.e. solidarity and community support. In other words, the stronger society capability is, the lower the suicide rate will be. The extremely high suicide rate cannot be solved by reducing risk of suicide attempts and providing healthcare for mental disorder, i.e. focusing on those individuals in need. What the Korean society really needs is strategies to prevent suicide assisted by comprehensive governmental supports addressing social challenges from poorly-funded social safety net to unfair labor market.
What countries experiencing success in suicide prevention strategies have in common is that they have encourage socially approaching the suicide ideation considering their own resources and environment. Finland has introduced the psychological autopsy as a comprehensive psychological assessment tool based on its social security framework; Demark has established a welfare system diversified from multiple perspectives; and Japan has implemented a PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Adjust) cycle grounded on systematic efforts and policy interest of the administrative authorities.
Actually, there were 28.6 (#7) per 100,000 population in Demark in 1985, but drastically declined to 9.4 (#26) in 2017. Rates of suicide spiked heavily in the late 1990s in Japan, but have been gradually declining for 10 consecutive years, falling to the lowest on record in 2019 (“2020 Counter-Suicide Whitepaper”, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (Japan)). Meanwhile, South Korea ranked #1 in 2017 with extremely high suicide rate of 23.0 deaths per 100,000, rapidly raising from 11.2 (#23) in 1985.
“Although nowadays suicide is not viewed as a personal problem, but Korean society yet does not have sufficient social framework to support vulnerable groups and bereaved family suffering the most than anyone else,” explains Park. “We can suppress the suicide rate in the true sense only with a combination of proactive government intervention, social consensus, law revision, institutional reorganization, research, investigation, planning and practice.”
* “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).
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