The 024 suicide prevention hotline answers a thousand calls on its first day

The 024 telephone line for assistance and suicide prevention has answered this Tuesday, on its first active day, approximately a thousand calls, with an average time of 25 to 30 minutes for each one of them.

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, has indicated in the press conference after the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS) that "024 has come to stay", as reported by EFE. She has also emphasized how from the first day of operation, this issue shows that it serves to "help and support those who have suicidal ideation" so that they make "a call to life and prevent more deaths".

Darias has focused on this suicide prevention tool after attempts increased by 30% in 2020, with almost 4,000 people taking their own lives that year and between 80,000 and 100,000 trying.

The minister recalled that it is a plan financed by the Ministry of Health with 100 million euros and by the communities with their own contributions to the project. These 100 million, he said, will be broken down between now and 2024 in the State budgets, this year's item being 30 million euros, of which 80% will be transferred to the autonomous communities and 20% is executed by part of the Ministry.

It has also announced that 10 million euros had been distributed to the communities so that they could include training actions in their plans in areas such as health technology, public health surveillance, patient safety or early care for gender-based violence with the aim of training 90,000 professionals.

On the other hand, he has admitted that the 44 actions included in the plan cannot be "done all at once" and has highlighted the commitment that the new offer of specialized places has more positions in child and adolescent psychiatry, added to those already existing .