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S057-2

New Strategy in Suicide Prevention in Korea : Crisis Intervention in High-risk
Groups

Jong-IK Park

Kangwon National University, Chuncheon Mental Hospital, Korea

Background/Objective: South Korea has the highest age-standardized suicide rate among OECD
countries for a decade, and it is over two times higher than the average suicide rate of OECD
countries in 2012. This has brought attention to necessity for the management of discharged suicide
attempters, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare got started to provide financial support to manage
ER visitors due to suicide attempts in 25 large hospitals across the nation from 2013.

Method: The service system basically consists of referring ER visitors related to suicide attempt to
case managers following medical treatment. After 4 weeks of short-term case management, it makes
it a rule to refer to community mental health center or suicide prevention center irrespective of
psychiatric maintenance treatment.

Result: Whole ER visitors from January 2014 to December 2014 were 6,540. 48.4% of whole ER
visitors gave consent to short-term case management system, 1,619 persons, fifty-one percent that
have been provided with the service, 1,018 persons were referred to community mental health center
one time, and 24.3% of them were referred to the community mental health center two times.

Conclusion: There are several limitations to the current management service for the suicide
attempters but Korean government will expand the number and scope of hospitals across nation.