Alliance Against Depression

The Alliance against Depression is an integrated community-based approach to tackling depression and suicide. It originated in Germany in 2008 using EU funding to tackle Mental Health issues and involved several members and more than 100 network partners across Europe, Chile, Canada and Australia. The main aim of the EAAD is to improve care and optimize treatment for patients with Depressive disorders and reduce suicidal behavior. PUlrich Hegerl is currently the president of the EAAD.

Approach

The AAD uses a 4 pillared approach to suicide prevention which includes training specific to primary care and Mental Health care givers are trained to recognize and treat patients presenting with Mental Health related issues. The second pillar is an overarching public awareness raising campaign that consists of flyers, posters and community events. The third pillar relates to community facilitators and stakeholders being targeted and educated to understand the warning signs of a developing mental health issue and / or suicidal behavior. These could include Teachers, Parents, Youth Workers etc and the fourth pillar involves direct assistance for high-risk groups who experience suicidal behavior. The concept of the AAD is that while each AAD must run activities that encompass all four pillars, the specifics of what that entails will differ between communities, cultures and countries and therefore the AAD allows flexibility from one group to the next as to how their local AAD is run and what their specific focuses are.

Trials

The Alliance Against Depression is recognized as the world’s best practice for the care of people with depression and in the prevention of suicidal behavior. The initial AAD was in the trial region of Nuremberg and resulted in a 24% reduction of suicidal acts within a 2 year period. The AAD has the flexibility to be adapted based on the specific needs of the local community.

Results

According to the trials, the Nuremberg AAD successfully reduced the number of suicidal acts and suicide attempts by 24% over a 2-year period when compared to the controlled region. There was no significant reduction in completed suicides over that time.

Australian AAD

The WA Primary Health Alliance brought the AAD over to Western Australia in 2017 with the Kwinana AAD being the first to be created in 2018. Since then local AAD’s have been created in Rockingham, Belmont, Busselton, Kalamunda and Cockburn.

Daniel Rock, the Alliances principal advisor for Mental Health at WAPHA said “The alliance actually equips people with specific knowledge around their community so instead of saying, 'You should go to your GP, you should go seek help', you can actually point to a place to go to [and say] 'Why don't you go to the X centre or you should speak to this GP”