Expert calls for strategy to keep suicide rate low

China needs to establish national prevention strategies to help maintain a declining suicide rate, a top specialist said.

"Given suicide's complexity, to maintain an ever-declining trend requires an all-out effort by all of society and various government departments," said Huang Yueqin, director of the National Center for Mental Health, on World Suicide Prevention Day, which was Wednesday.

The nation's suicide rate has been declining over the past two decades and now stands at 8.7 out of 100,000 people, according to a World Health Organization report on Sept 4. In the mid-1990s, it was 23 out of 100,000, the report said.