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It will start operating this Tuesday, three years after the Government promised to create it
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It will be free, confidential and will be managed by a multidisciplinary Red Cross team
The Ministry of Health presented this Monday the 024, a free, confidential and public suicide prevention hotline. The telephone will start operating this Tuesday, will manage it Red Cross and the goal is to provide 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, help to people with suicidal thoughts or ideations, as well as their families. The attention will be structured in the form of levels and when there is a high risk, the emergency services will be alerted.
The start-up of this service comes with years late and after repeated requests from associations, health professionals and political parties, given that suicide is an avoidable death. Last September the first major demonstration against suicide delivered to the Ministry of Health one million signatures demanding urgent prevention measures, the hiring of more professionals specialized in public health and the launch of a telephone service that the Government promised, for the first time, in 2019.
However, the arrival of the pandemic delayed the approval of the Mental Health Strategy, which came to light last December and which, for the first time, includes a comprehensive suicide prevention plan. The Strategy was postponed and the launch of a telephone that promised again Pedro Sanchez last October and that, until six months later, did not come true.
other needs
“Finally the institutions have taken the initiative & rdquor ;, applauds Xavier Jimenez, honorary president of the Redaipis, suicide prevention and research association, who points out that the telephone “can prevent many suicides & rdquor; because “in a moment of desperation it is good to find someone to help you, to make you see the problem differently, to tell you that your children need you”. However, the clinical psychologist also warns that 024 is a “little patch” because in addition to punctual attention need to derive that person to specialized resources that, in the public system, have long waiting lists. Therefore, calls for the hiring of more professionals in the public system.
In turn, the president of the Catalan Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Gemma Parrmont, considers that the launch of the telephone is “good news & rdquor; but he warns of the importance that in the multidisciplinary teams formed by the Red Cross to attend to 024 there psychiatrists Given that “the majority of suicides are committed by people with mental diseases”. Likewise, it demands that these teams “know the care circuits of each community well & rdquor; for the activation of the emergency system or referral to care resources, which differ from one territory to another and from a city to a rural area.
11 a day
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The numbers speak for themselves. The pandemic has left behind the record 3,941 deaths in 2020, 7.4% more than in 2019. This figure implies that almost 11 people every day take their own lives, to which we must add another 220 who try and fail or the six people who, on average, suffer from the situation in the environment, the so-called survivors. And suicidal ideas have risen especially among teenagers. According to a Spanish study, 19% of young people between 14 and 19 years old wanted their death in the last year, 7% planned it and 4.6% tried to take their own life.
Therefore, the Minister of Health, Carolina Dariashas pointed out that the telephone arrives at a very necessary moment and supposes “a great step […] in the face of a silenced threat.