Adopting An Ecological Public Health Approach to Suicide Prevention - the Cases of Turkey and Canada: Why Can’t We Get There?

Suicide remains as a major public health problem in both Turkey and Canada; there has been a slight upward trend in suicide rates from the 1950s until present day. These nations also share the same distribution pattern of suicide wherein rural and remote populations have a significantly elevated risk of suicide compared to their urban counterparts. In both nations, regrettably, suicide prevention has, in the main, focused narrowly on identifying proximate, individual level risk factors, rather than on population mental health. However national statistical data on suicide rates indicates that such prevention strategies have achieved only limited success. In light of these data, there is a pressing need to reconsider our approach to preventing suicide and thus this paper: 1) provides an overview of ecological approaches; 2) constructs an argument for an ecological approach to suicide prevention; 3) considers nascent examples from other federated countries that have enacted national strategies that may provide lessons for Turkey and Canada. Drawing on extant, international examples of ecological approaches to suicide prevention the authors make the argument that both Turkey and Canada need to embrace and enact such approaches, particularly given the efficacy of ecological public health approaches to reach rural and remote populations.