In rapidly developing Vietnam, there is concern over what is thought to be a significant accompanying rise in suicide but this is based on fragmentary evidence since there is no system in place for recording any causes of death apart from those occurring in hospitals. No suicide prevention effort can be evaluated, nor is there impetus to engage in one, without such baseline information. SPI is working with Tran Thanh Huong, a leading suicide researcher in Vietnam, who has studied the current monitoring system and is working with us to develop a comprehensive plan that should enable to us to determine when suicide is the case of death.
The project will ascertain the frequency of suicide and attempted suicide by a sampling method in seven geographically representative provinces throughout the country. One district in each province will be randomly selected for this study. Each district contains on average 250,000 inhabitants and includes approximately 25 communes. All inhabitants involved in the seven districts will be involved in the study. A first step will be the development of both a questionnaire for doing verbal autopsies with family members in every death and a form for monitoring attempted suicide. Staff in communes will be trained in filling out the form for monitoring, and in doing verbal autopsies, and will be tested for their skill in doing so. They will visit every family after a death and interview them to determine if the cause of death is a suicide. The Principal Investigator will come at three month intervals to retest staff and oversee the process. At the end of a year the data for all the districts will be analyzed so that we will have a good estimate of that the actual suicide rate is in the country.
Suicide Prevention in Vietnam 