The family doctor and the prevention of suicide.

Suicide rates are rising almost everywhere in the west; 3,500 Canadians currently take their lives each year. The causes are complex: conditions in society interact with individual life situations as well as with emotional disturbance, particularly depression. The family doctor has a role to play at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of prevention. As a group, doctors can press for social action aimed at influencing conditions rooted in society, but doctors act most effectively in their own offices when they routinely consider depression and suicide potential in their patients. The article suggests how this may be done and how suicidal thinking and behavior may be managed.