Suicide prevention. Role of the pharmaceutical industry

The role of the pharmaceutical industry in suicide prevention cannot limit itself to the sole biological therapeutical proposition which would be bound to fail anyway, considering it does not take into account human suffering and the ned for a human support. Beside this contribution it may also provide a methodology and logistics derived from the industrial world from which it take sits experience and rigour. It has managed to gather specialists in suicide prevention around the educational program DepRelief(R). This is how the Latin Group for Suicide Prevention saw the day, a group who, from 1994 onward, has been elaborating educational tools mainly intended for doctors. Those programs have already been widely used in France in the frame of training sessions. Similar programs showed som efficacy in the pat, as may be attested by the Gotland experience. This example illustrates the possibility for pharmaceutical industry of a new commitment in which it will hopefully get involved more and more, in collaboration with the medical and associative world.