Australia should adopt a European initiative that has reduced suicides by 30 per cent in just five years, researchers have said.

The strategy involves better training for health professionals; more online services and crisis call centres; better school-based initiatives; and reduced access to suicide methods, amongst other measures.

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The National Coalition for Suicide Prevention has called upon the government to fund a nationwide pilot of the program, which could reportedly ‘halve’ Australia’s rate.

“If we can pull together all community and health organisations to deliver evidence-based strategies at the same time, in the same location, then we have a good chance of reducing rates in Australia by as much as 30 to 50 per cent, within four to five years,” Black Dog Institute director Professor Helen Christensen told the ABC.

“Just doing what we have always done is not really going to make any difference to those rates.”

More than 2,500 Australians took their own life in 2013, with suicide rates remaining largely unchanged over the past decade, the ABS reported.

The nation currently spends at least four times more on skin cancer research than on suicide prevention, despite suicide inflicting a “much higher” burden on the community, Professor Christensen claimed.

“Suicide costs the country something like $17 billion – and yet we only invest about $250 million over two years in suicide prevention activities.

“So there is a miss-match between the amounts of money that is spent on suicide prevention and that spent on other important disorders and really there needs to be compensation.”