GOVERNING SUICIDE PREVENTION IN CHILE, 2013-2021: DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS OF THE STATE’S RESPONSE USING COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE APPROACH.

Abstract

Suicide prevention is a complex problem of public health that defies the administrative capacity of most States. To help States address this problem, the World Health Organization has developed guidelines to orient governments in the collaborative construction of a national strategy of suicide prevention.  The objective of the present article is to analyze the Chilean State’s response in suicide prevention between 2013 and 2021 using the collaborative governance approach. Working with the principal official documents, I use content analysis to trace the deliberative process on relevant information and the efforts to build a shared understanding of the problem (i.e., high suicide rate) and its causes.

In conclusion, for the period 2013-2021, the governance of suicide prevention in Chile is similar to a collaborative governance regime with a distant relation to stakeholders. It is based in the National Program of Suicide Prevention, designed by the Health Ministry at the national level. Even when it recognizes the importance of an intersectoral approach, the advances are limited although it has improved since 2019. Collaboration with non-governmental stakeholders is inexistent. Since 2017, the integration of the social determinants of health into the National Plan of Mental Health now favors actions to strengthen community and social protective factors, key for suicide prevention.