Abstract

REVISITING SUICIDE

*Amrita Sen and Preenon Bagchi

ABSTRACT

“The first step down the dangerous road to suicide is thinking about it” - V. Mark Durand and David H. Barlow. Human suicidal behaviour has always been a source of dread and wonder to mankind. When a person has suicidal ideas, he is thinking of preponing his death and undergoing that process voluntarily. All suicidal people are not death seekers. Some attempt to communicate pain to reduce isolation, to avoid consequences of social status change, seek revenge, and convey a whole lot of other meanings which are essentially individualistic. Minimally “suicide” is intentional self-murder. The concept derives from the Latin sui (‘one self’) and cide (“a killing”) i.e. “self murder”. It is a fatal act that represents the person’s wish to die. Suicide has also been defined as the extinction of a person’s own existence as a purposeful act that prevents survival and is identified as an individual as the best solution for a personal problem [1]. Suicide is a major public health problem. Approximately 0.9% of all deaths are the result of suicide. About 1000 persons are estimated to commit suicide each day worldwide. In India, over 10,000 people commit suicide in a year [2]. In India, more than one lakh (118112) lives were lost to suicide in the year 2006. In the last two decades, the suicide rate has increased from 7.9 to 10.3 per 100,000. The southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have a suicide rate of more than 15 while in the Northern States of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir, the suicide rate is less than 3. The majority of suicides (37.8%) in India are by those below the

Keywords: health problem, health problem.