Abstract

Suicide is a public health problem. Prevention requires training actions at an emotional level, the scientific treatment of suicidal risk situations and a sensitive management by the media. Following the commemorations of the World Suicide Prevention Day and the World Mental Health Day, this is an opportunity to reconceptualize how the of illness as a process facilitates the approach to mental disorders. Understanding the life history of each patient allows for an adequate biographical contextualization that explains the complex interaction between early life stress, vulnerability, epigenetics and vital, social and environmental circumstances. Consistent with this clinical view, medical actions must also focus on the participation in continual medical education programs and at the school of medicine, and on the design of promotion/prevention actions that consider the vision of the health-disease continuum and that conceives physical and mental health as a unit. The above is strengthened with the development of health professionals own introspective abilities to detect burnout syndrome as a mechanism of loss of empathy.

Keywords: suicide; suicide prevention; early life stress; empathy; burnout syndrome.