Studying suicide from the life course perspective: implications for prevention.

Suicide is an important contributor to premature mortality accounting for over 800 000 deaths worldwide every year. Environmental and genetic factors acting from before birth to old age affect an individual's risk of suicide. Risk is influenced not only by psychiatric illness and impulsive behaviour but also by factors such as the cultural acceptability of suicide, the ease of availability of lethal suicide methods, help-seeking behaviours in times of crisis and access to effective treatments following self-harm. Suicide prevention programmes might usefully focus on two discrete areas: the prevention of the psychiatric illnesses that precede suicide and tackling those risk factors particular to suicide such as media influences, help-seeking, the availability of methods and the medical management of self-harm.