[Suicide prevention activities of psychiatry-related professional societies: the promotion of suicide prevention in psychiatric care].

Suicide prevention is promoted nationally in Japan. In the General Principles of Suicide Prevention Policy determined in 2007, the areas in which, psychiatry contributed were shown to be important, for example, psychiatric care, suicide, aftercare program for suicide attempters, mental health promotion, and actual elucidation of the cause of suicide. At a part of these national measures, guidelines on suicide attempters' care are devised by the Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine and the Japanese Association for Emergency Psychiatry, and a training workshop on caring for suicide attempters was held by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The Japanese society for Emergency Medicine devised an educational program of care for patients with mental health problems in emergency care in cooperation with the Japanese Association for Emergency Psychiatry and Japanese Society of General Hospital Psychiatry. On the other hand, suicide prevention and staff care at hospitals are important problems, and the Japan Council for Quality Health Care devised a program and conducted a training workshop. Also, the Japanese Association for Suicide Prevention conducted workshops for both the educational program of cognitive-behavioral therapy and facilitator training program for gatekeeper. The Japanese Society of Mood Disorders conducted a training workshop involving clinical high-risk case discussion. Also, the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology devised clinical guidelines for suicide prevention and distributed them to all society members. In this society, on-site discussion of the guidelines and the holding of workshops are expected in the future. It is hoped that these guidelines will be utilized and training workshops will be held in the future.