Background:
12,000 suicides and at least 160,000 attempted suicides are recorded in France each year. For practitioners, the prevention of suicide involves better identifying individuals with suicidal thoughts and putting in place measures to relieve their anxiety.
Doctors and other medical personnel are obviously on the front line in this fight, but other professionals also deal directly with individuals going through suicidal crises, or who are likely to do so, when decisions are taken in conflictual or particularly painful situations.
This applies to court clerks, judges and prosecutors, particularly those dealing with children, or family cases, investigating judges and judges charged with the protection of vulnerable individuals, whether in civil or criminal matters.
To what extent are judges and prosecutors concerned by this issue? Can they play an active role in the prevention of suicide, in an official capacity? If so, how? How far? And organised in what way?
Approach:
This seminar, led by a judge and a consultant psychiatrist, will be chaired by a key figure with an interest in suicide prevention. It will provide an opportunity to consider all of these issues and should offer some keys to understanding a situation that cannot continue.
It is the result of a workshop, involving judges, prosecutors and doctors, that has been running for over two years at ENM (French National School for the Judiciary).