Could public awareness campaigns tackling depression add value to suicide prevention strategies

The main three aims were as follows: 1. To discuss the role of stigma related to depression and suicide. 2. To present the EAAD (European Alliance Against Depression) public awareness campaign experience, evaluate it from a theoretical perspective. 3. To compare it with analogous campaigns tackling suicide and/or depression. Methods: The EAAD campaign experience will be overviewed in regard to planning, implementation and evaluation aspects, and compared to the results of a review of relevant publications reporting on public awareness campaigns tackling depression and suicide. Results: Public awareness campaigns tackling depression and suicide endeavor to decrease stigma and encourage people to seek help. Improving public acceptance of evidence-based depression care is hindered by misconceptions regarding pharmacotherapy and confidence in treatment. Increased campaign awareness and recognition are seldom followed by significant changes in attitudes, especially those related to pharmacotherapy. Conclusions: Improving confidence in treatment of depression is an important challenge within public awareness campaigns tackling depression. In this regard broad communication approaches seem to be less effective than stratified ones. The need for crafting specific messages and communication strategies that target at specific audiences arises as an important issue in the implementation of public awareness campaigns preventing depression and suicide. Language: en