The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has begun compiling measures to stem the growing number of suicides in Japan, according to ministry officials.

Under a three-year project through March 2004, the ministry will take countermeasures accounting for generational and regional differences in the population and develop new psychotropic drugs to help prevent suicides, the officials said.

According to a ministry survey, 30,226 people committed suicide last year, the third year in a row that the level has exceeded 30,000. The rise in unemployment is believed to be the main factor behind the deaths.

In Japan, suicide rates tend to be high among young people and the elderly, but there has recently been an increase in suicides among those in their 50s. In 2000, those in their 50s accounted for 25.9 percent of all suicides.

The ministry has set up an 18-member study group that includes psychiatrists, sociologists, forensic doctors and architects to work out multidimensional approaches to suicide prevention.

The group will question bereaved families and collect information on the motives and means used to commit suicide from police and doctors who provide emergency care.

Experts will also investigate the victims' personal relations in the workplace and the homes of people who have committed suicide and examine whether they suffered from depression or overindulged in alcohol.

Architects in the group will study whether the designs of roofs and railway platforms can be altered to help prevent suicides.

Based on such approaches, the panel is expected to compile individual antisuicide measures compatible with a wide variety of people and different living conditions.

Local governments in Akita and Niigata prefectures have begun tackling the rise in suicides among the elderly, but urban areas have not taken many measures yet.

Nobumichi Sakai, a leading member of the study group who heads the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, said the panel aims to compile scientific measures based on social conditions.

Separate ministry groups will also study the development of antidepressant drugs and examine the economic impact of the deaths, the officials said.