Increasing Suicidal Tendencies; Why?

Suicide is taking up one’s own life and is quite a common feature in depressive state. Though it’s not necessary that people who are in depression can only take up there life but so do people with other reasons. But it has been estimated that 50% of the people who attempt suicide or complete the act, do so during or in the recovery phase of a depressive episode.

Depressive people are 20% more likely to end their own life than non depressive people. Even if the person who has committed suicide doesn’t have any depressive history, than also it will be still associated with some other psychotic disorder.

It is one of the ten leading causes of death in most of the Western countries. In United States only, its eighth or ninth leading cause of death, with current estimates of 300,000 suicidal deaths each year, more than 200,000 people commit suicide and nearly 3 percent of Americans have made a suicide attempt at some point of their life.

It’s been noted, that attempts for suicide are mostly made by young people, at least two- third of the people who attempt suicide are under the age of 35. In US and Western countries, women are three to four percent more likely to attempt suicide than men.

Remember, there is a difference between attempt and complete suicide. Rate of suicide attempts will be four times higher if one is divorced or separated. Reasons like interpersonal discord, domestic violence,failed romances or other severe stress force them to end up there life. The women usually take up drug or injection, slash their wrist while on the other hand men generally use methods which are lethal like shooting oneself, and that’s why complete suicide rate is higher for men than women but attempt rate is higher for women.

In India, in rural areas, generally methods of hanging, poisoning with pesticide, drowning or setting oneself on fire is used for suicide and all these methods are dangerous as they have less chances of survival. There are some pesticides, usually found in rural homes which kill within three hours. If the person attempting suicide is living in a remote area and attempts suicide than due to lack of transportation or any other reason, one is not able to take the victim to the hospital on time.

According to a latest study, it has been found that male suicides have started to outnumber the women as they get older. It’s believed that women after getting
married and having children becomes more emotionally and psychologically stronger and thus the rate goes down.

Not only people with mood disorders or divorced or separated commit suicide but there is another group of adults who are also among high risk group. These include people with schizophrenia or alcoholism, which are the two other forms of psychopathology most commonly associated with this heinous act.

There is higher tendency for committing suicide among people who live alone. Then there are certain professionals like dentists, lawyers, physicians and psychologists who are at higher than average risk. Female physician and female psychologist, both are at much higher risk, say around three times more than women of general population; male physicians have suicide rate about twice that of men in general population.

Doctors and psychologists advice giving a patient ear to such people as it will not only help them releving their tensions but one can actually stop them taking such extreme steps.