FORSAM stands for “Prevention of Suicidal Actions through Monitoring.” FORSAM is an online monitoring portal for suicide prevention, which has recently been developed by DRISP. The website presents data on suicides and suicide attempts for various risk groups. The latest available data is available at the municipality, healthcare cluster, regional, and national levels.
The idea behind FORSAM is to create an easily accessible monitoring portal where stakeholders in suicide prevention can easily find information, for instance to questions, such as:
- What is the profile in terms of gender, age, marital status, household conditions, socioeconomic status, education, mental illnesses, chronic illnesses of individuals who die by suicide in a specific municipality?
- What is the suicide rate among individuals with mental illnesses?
- How many of the individuals who die by suicide in the catchment area of a specific hospital have received psychiatric treatment within the last 6 months?
You can find FORSAM here.
FORSAM distinguishes itself from existing databases by including: 1) breakdowns by risk groups (e.g., individuals with mental illnesses, chronic physical illnesses, unemployed individuals, divorced individuals, widows/widowers, disability pensioners, substance abusers, vulnerable youth, recent stressful events); 2) recorded contacts to the healthcare system, and 3) numbers on family members who are survivors of suicide and relatives who are affected by suicide attempts.
FORSAM aims to make data quickly and easily accessible to the many different stakeholders working in suicide prevention, providing them with up-to-date validated data.
FORSAM is operated by DRISP in collaboration with partners from municipalities (including Rødovre Municipality), the Local Government Denmark, Danish Regions, the leaders of the Suicide Prevention Clinics, and Livslinien.