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Courtney Weatherburne reporting
117 Belizeans committed suicide between 2012 and July 3rd 2017. 94 of those suicide victims were men.

Lorna Perez, Surveillance Officer, Epidemiology Unit
"When it comes to actually men dying from suicides we have them dying 5 times more than women."

Another vulnerable group is youth. During that same period, 7 children between the ages of 10 and 14 and 8 between the ages of 15 and 19 committed suicide.

Lorna Perez, Surveillance Officer, Epidemiology Unit
"The statistics are alarming, they definitely call for action and we need to act now."

And the Ministry of Health along with the Pan American Health Organization are taking action now through a stakeholder consultation.

Eleanor Bennett, Nursing Administrator, Mental Health
"We have convened a group of 60 plus stakeholders and these are people who have an interest in suicide who are doing something to prevent suicide or who have hopefully resources to help us address the issue of suicide prevention and what we want people to do today is bring their ideas about how we as a country can put our efforts together to address this problem of suicide."

Courtney Weatherburne
"What are some of the specific topics or areas of concern you all are addressing?"

Eleanor Bennett
"So we are looking at the area of surveillance and data collection which is important to help us understand the problem or the issue of suicide and that will tell us who is dying by suicide, where are they dying of suicide. We have to do a little bit more research to understand why is it that people are dying by suicide, we are going to look at crisis response, what happens when somebody dies from let's say from a school or from a small community or from the work place how do we help those who have questions and who themselves might be thinking about suicide."

But while this conference is at the official level, families can do their part to look out for signs.

Eleanor Bennett
"Every case is different but we do know there are some things that might be clues that somebody is thinking about hurting themselves so look for people making plans, definite plans and many times people will tell others "I am thinking about suicide and I will kill myself" don't ignore that we have a habit of because it is unpleasant we don't want to hear it, we try to sweep it under the rug and tell people change your mind."

"Look for things like people looking for opportunities to say goodbye or to give away their personal stuff, look for people writing letters and generally appearing if they are trying to say good bye and look for somebody who is severely depressed whose attitude has changed, whose behaviors have changed who have become more withdrawn than before."

Lorna Perez, Surveillance Officer, Epidemiology Unit
"Definitely suicides is a major public health problem."

"We really need to take it seriously and I think it is a situation not only just for the Ministry of Health to address but all persons who have an interest in ensuring that we start to put down those numbers and address the issues that are leading to this."