To prevent social isolation or the burden of family caregiving and nursing from leading to suicide, the government will proactively identify and support related at-risk households. For households at high risk of suicide, it will prioritize linking them with emergency welfare, mental health counseling, and care services, and it will also build a system that aggregates finance, welfare, and lonely death information to detect warning signs early.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare said on the 11th that it reported the "suicide prevention plan for isolated and at-risk households" and the "suicide prevention plan for caregiving and nursing burdens," prepared jointly with related ministries, at a Cabinet meeting. This is a follow-up to the sector-specific suicide prevention measures released in May.
The government believes that as single-person households increase and the population ages, social isolation and the burden of family caregiving are growing, which could raise suicide risk. Accordingly, it focused on identifying isolated and at-risk households and families with heavy caregiving burdens early and on consolidation of economic support and care services.
Minister Jung Eun-kyeong said, "Anyone can face crises in life, but if they are connected to neighbors and society, there are always ways to get back up," adding, "We will cut the chain that consolidates social isolation and caregiving burdens into suicide and ensure that the necessary welfare services are swiftly linked."
◇ Use finance and welfare information to find people at risk of suicide first
The government will first detect early warning signs of suicide and isolation.
It will consolidate information such as self-harm and suicide attempts through linkage with the lonely death crisis response system and promote targeted discovery projects to identify people by isolation type. By December, it plans to additionally consolidate financial crisis information, such as excessive debt and damage from illegal private lending, into the system for discovering welfare blind spots.
For households in severe financial crisis, it will also expand the linkage system so that financial institutions can directly request services from local governments.
It will also increase on-site discovery personnel. It will gradually expand staff for township-level visiting health and welfare teams, and to activate home visits, it will use "Hope Dream Packages" containing daily necessities. It will also streamline the system for discovering people at risk of suicide through private human safety nets such as residents.
If a report received through the welfare crisis alert app contains suicide-related expressions, 24-hour emergency counseling will be provided.
Emergency welfare will be provided swiftly to high-risk groups for suicide facing economic crisis. For high-risk groups for suicide, on-site verification procedures will be omitted to provide support, and the system will be revised so that townships can provide small amounts first.
Starting next year, the government will also improve the dependent-relative criteria for livelihood benefits and medical benefits to reduce welfare blind spots for households in economic crisis.
◇ Support by isolation risk from youth to middle-aged and older adults
Support by target group to reduce isolation will also be expanded.
The Youth Future Center, which targets isolated and reclusive youth at high risk of suicide, will expand nationwide starting in September. Using local institutions, it will provide counseling and case management within youths' living areas.
For middle-aged groups such as men in their 50s and 60s at high risk of lonely death, it will support relationship recovery and health management. For those who have difficulty engaging in outside activities, it will also develop middle-aged specialized programs that allow them to commute to and from social welfare facilities to restore daily life.
For isolated older adults, it will consolidate integrated care services such as medical care and long-term care and expand the distribution of information and communication technology (ICT) devices such as emergency call devices and activity sensors.
For single-person households, it will provide services that enhance everyday life capabilities such as relationship building, care, and consumption. For single-parent families at risk of suicide, it will support emergency psychological counseling through family centers and single-parent facilities.
The government is also reviewing the creation of a "unified discovery platform for at-risk households" that bundles information scattered across systems such as welfare blind spots and lonely death crisis response. The idea is to integrate multiple crisis information sources to identify high-risk groups and use the results for on-site response.
◇ "Families collapsing under caregiving" will also get preemptive support
Suicide prevention measures for caregiving and nursing burdens focus on identifying family caregivers' burdens early.
Starting in the second half of this year, the government will use social security data to identify households with heavy caregiving burdens among families caring for people with severe dementia or developmental disabilities. If confirmed as high-risk households, it will prioritize consolidation of up to 72 hours of emergency care and consultations at mental health welfare centers. For people needing care, it will also swiftly consolidate them with community integrated care services.
When applying for long-term care or disability registration, it will also review the family's caregiving environment. At the Youth Future Center and Developmental Disabilities Support Center, it will conduct depression screening and, if mental health risks are identified, consolidate counseling and vouchers for psychological counseling.
It will also reduce caregiving burdens that families must shoulder directly. It will expand home-visit care for older adults with severe conditions or dementia and increase home-based care services such as home-visit rehabilitation, nutrition guidance, and hospital accompaniment. The current 30 types of home-based care services will be expanded to 60.
It will also strengthen integrated care and adult daytime activity services for people with the most severe developmental disabilities. For families requiring high-intensity care such as dementia or developmental disabilities, it will provide caregiving information, education, and counseling.
It will also review system improvements to prevent people from quitting their jobs due to caregiving. It plans to consider expanding the eligible users of family care leave and leave of absence to include foster families and de facto unions.
It will also support rest for family caregivers. It will increase the use of the family vacation program that supports short-term care and full-day home-visit care for families of older adults with severe conditions or dementia, and expand the eligible recipients of respite support for families of people with developmental disabilities.
It will also push measures to lower the burden of nursing costs. Starting in the first half of next year, the government plans to reduce out-of-pocket costs for nursing care at long-term care hospitals and raise emergency welfare livelihood support funds.
The government will also conduct a survey to more specifically identify the link between caregiving and nursing burdens and suicide. It will survey the actual conditions of family caregivers for dementia and developmental disabilities and newly reflect "caregiving and nursing burdens" in the classification of suicide causes to accumulate related data.