World
Japan, known for its historical fascination with suicide, has one of the highest rates in the world – twice that of the United States. Internet suicide sites , where Japanese can find detailed instructions as well as others interested in dying with them, are becoming more common. The government recently said it aims to reduce the rate.
• Rates are also high in Eastern Europe. The lowest tend to be found in Latin America, in Muslim countries and in parts of Asia.
• Self-poisoning, especially with insecticides, is the most common way of committing suicide in rural China and Pakistan.
Suicide
Firearms are the most frequent method of suicide for adults in the United States . Suicide is also more common
in states with higher rates of gun ownership.
• Alcoholism is a factor in about 30 percent of all suicides.
• In Virginia, the annual hospitalization cost for suicide attempts is $30 million.
• For every suicide, there are an estimated eight to 25 attempts – a formula that would equal anywhere from 1,360 to 4,250 attempts a year in Hampton Roads.
• Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist dubbed “Dr. Death,” was released from prison in June after serving eight years for helping a terminally ill patient kill himself. Now 79, Ke vorkian claims to have participated in at least 130 assisted suicides, but he has promised the court not to take part in any more.
• Suicide was once considered a felony in various states, but attempts were rarely prosecuted. Ironically, in some countries, the penalty for attempted suicide was death. In the United Kingdom, up until 1961, people who committed suicide would have their estates forfeited.
• In several states, including Virginia, suicide is still considered an infraction of common law – unwritten laws based on old English law. That’s important to life insurance companies, because policies can be voided if a death occurs during the commission of a crime. Most companies also protect
themselves with clauses that exclude intentional injury.
• Nearly twice as many American die every year from suicide (32,000-plus) as are killed by drunken drivers (17,000).
• From 1979 to 1999, 450,000 people in the United States died from HIV/AIDS; over that same 20-year period, more than 600,000 died from suicide.
• Contrary to urban myth, most suicides occur in the spring, not around the winter holidays.
• Family doctors often miss the warning signs of suicide. In the month before they killed themselves, 75 percent of elderly people had visited a physician.
War
During the core years of the Vietnam War , from 1964 to 19 73, almost four times as many Americans died by suicide as died in the war.
• Plato compared suicide to a soldier on duty who abandons his post.
• Suicide was common in ancient Rome. Soldiers routinely fell on their swords to avoid capture. Condemned prisoners were allowed to kill themselves before their executions.
Population
At any given time, in any given group of people, one in 20 is contemplating self-destruction.
• Twenty percent of American high school students report having seriously considered suicide during the previous 12 months. Eight percent make an attempt.
• A recent study found that obese men are 42 percent less likely to commit suicide than men at the lower end of the normal weight range. Scientists think it might be related to the higher production of insulin and other mood- affecting hormones.
• On California’s death row, more condemned inmates die from suicide than from execution.
• From 1981 to 1994, the suicide rate increased 83 percent for black men ages 15-24. In recent years, rates for black Americans of all ages have showed a small but steady decline.
• Suicide has long been viewed as a “white” problem – so much so that when a 20-year-old black man was found hanged near the Hampton Coliseum in 1995, much of the black community suspected he’d been lynched. Antwan Sedgwick’s death sparked demonstrations, accusations of a cover-up and an HBO broadcast, “Death by Hanging: A Family’s Pledge of Allegiance.” In the end, investigators concluded that Sedgwick had killed himself.
• When the new APM terminal on Craney Island was going up, construction crews came across human bones and a rusty gun. Police concluded that the remains were those of a Coast Guardsman who apparently walked off the nearby base four years ago and killed himself.
Depression
Ninety percent of people who kill themselves are suffering from a treatable mental illness, most often depression. A host of motivations are behind the rest: impulse, revenge, martyrdom, disgrace, terminal illness, cult pacts and the Romeo and Juliet syndrome.
• Fewer than half of all Americans consider depression to be a health problem, and two out of five believe it is a sign of personal weakness.
• Researchers analyzing DNA are zeroing in on particular chromosomes that appear to be linked to major depression.
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