Jun 8, 2007, 4:43 GMT
Tokyo - The Japanese government introduced guidelines Friday aimed at preventing suicide and reducing the suicide rate by 20 per cent by 2016.
The suicide-prevention guidelines were introduced after the National Police Agency reported Thursday that the suicide rate had topped 30,000 in 2006 for the ninth year in a row.
The nation's first comprehensive suicide-prevention measures, which were based on the basic suicide-prevention law enacted in October, set the target to reduce the number of suicides to 19.4 per 100,000 people by 2016 from 24.2 in 2005.
The countermeasures include establishing counselling services to identify people with suicidal tendencies, providing support to people who have attempted suicide and bereaved families whose relatives have killed themselves, and reviewing long work hours.
The government also called for promoting mental health care in the workplace, treating depression appropriately and improving the monitoring of suicide notices on the Internet.
Police said 32,155 people committed suicide in Japan last year. Although the figure fell 1.2 per cent from the year before, it is much higher than the rates of other industrialized nations.
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