Suicide

Suicide is the eleventh most common cause of death in the United States. People may consider suicide when they
are hopeless and can't see any other solution to their problems. Often it's related to serious depression, alcohol or
substance abuse, or a major stressful event.

Therapy and medicines can help most people who have suicidal thoughts. Treating mental illnesses and substance
abuse can reduce the risk of suicide. NIH: National Institute of Mental Health

(Latin suicidium, from sui caedere, "to kill oneself") is the act of a human being intentionally causing his or her own
death. Suicide is often committed out of despair, or attributed to some underlying mental disorder which includes
depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug abuse. Financial difficulties, troubles with
interpersonal relationships and other undesirable situations play a significant role.

Medically assisted suicide (euthanasia, or the right to die) is currently a controversial ethical issue involving people
who are terminally ill, in extreme pain, or have (perceived or construed) minimal quality of life through injury or
illness. Self-sacrifice for others is not always considered suicide, as the goal is not to kill oneself but to save another;
however, Émile Durkheim's theory termed such acts "altruistic suicide."

Classification

Self-harm

Self-harm is not a suicide attempt; however, initially self-harm was erroneously classified as a suicide attempt.
There is a non-causal correlation between self-harm and suicide; both are most commonly a joint effect of
depression.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide

Individuals who wish to end their own lives may enlist the assistance of another person to achieve death. The other
person, usually a family member or physician, may help carry out the act if the individual lacks the physical capacity
to do so even with the supplied means. Assisted suicide is a contentious moral and political issue in many countries,
as seen in the scandal surrounding Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a medical practitioner who supported euthanasia, was found
to have helped patients end their own lives, and was sentenced to prison time.

Murder–suicide

A murder–suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more other persons immediately before or at the same
time as him or herself.

The motivation for the murder in murder–suicide can be purely criminal in nature or be perceived by the perpetrator
as an act of care for loved ones in the context of severe depression.

Suicide attack

A suicide attack is when an attacker perpetrates an act of violence against others, typically to achieve a military or
political goal, that results in his or her own death as well. Suicide bombings are often regarded as an act of terrorism.
Historical examples include the assassination of Czar Alexander II and the in-part successful kamikaze attacks by
Japanese air pilots during the Second World War, as well as more recent attacks, such as the September 11th attacks.
Mass suicide

Some suicides are done under peer pressure or as a group. Mass suicides can take place with as few as two people,
in a "suicide pact", or with a larger number of people. An example is the mass suicide that took place by members of
the Peoples Temple, an American cult led by Jim Jones in Guyana in 1978.

Suicide pact

A suicide pact describes the suicides of two or more individuals in an agreed-upon plan. The plan may be to die
together, or separately and closely timed. Suicide pacts are generally distinct from mass suicide. The latter refers to
incidents in which a larger number of people kill themselves together for the same ideological reason, often within a
religious, political, military or paramilitary context. Suicide pacts, on the other hand, usually involve small groups of
people (such as married or romantic partners, family members, or friends) whose motivations are intensely personal
and individual.

Metaphorical suicide

The metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest", for example political suicide.

*Risk factors

-Mental illness

-Substance abuse

-Cigarette smoking.

-Problem gambling

-Biological

-Genetics has an effect on suicide risk accounting for 30–50% of the variance. Much of this relationship acts
through the heritability of mental illness. There is also evidence to suggest that if a parent has committed suicide, it
is a strong predictor of suicide attempts among the offspring.

-Social
-As a form of defiance or protest
-Judicial suicide
-Dutiful suicide
-Suicide as an escape

Other factors

Socio-economic factors such as unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and discrimination may trigger
suicidal thoughts. Poverty may not be a direct cause but it can increase the risk of suicide, as it is a major risk
group for depression. Advocacy of suicide has been cited as a contributing factor. Intelligence may also factor.
Initially proposed as a part of an evolutionary psychology explanation, which posited a minimum intelligence
required for one to commit suicide, the positive correlation between IQ and suicide has been replicated in a
number of studies. Some scientists doubt however that intelligence can be a cause of suicide,and the
intelligence is no longer a predictor of suicide when regressed with national religiousness and perceptions of
personal health.
Suicide methods

The leading method of suicide varies dramatically between countries. The leading methods in different regions
include hanging, pesticide poisoning, and firearms. Worldwide 30% of suicides are from pesticides. The use of this
method however varies markedly from 4% in Europe to more than 50% in the Pacific region. In the United States
52% of suicides involve the use of firearms. Asphyxiation and poisoning are fairly common as well. Together they
comprised about 40% of U.S. suicides. Other methods of suicide include blunt force trauma (jumping from a
building or bridge, self-defenestrating, stepping in front of a train, or car collision, for example). Exsanguination or
bloodletting (slitting one's wrist or throat), intentional drowning, self-immolation, electrocution, and intentional
starvation are other suicide methods. Individuals may also intentionally provoke another person into administering
lethal action against them, as in suicide by cop.

Prevention
Suicide prevention is an umbrella term for the collective efforts of local citizen organizations, mental health
practitioners and related professionals to reduce the incidence of suicide through prevention and proactive
measures. One of the first exclusively professional research centers was established in 1958 in Los Angeles. The
first crisis hotline service in the U.S. run by selected, trained citizen volunteers was established 1961 in San
Francisco.

Gender

In the Western world, males die much more often by means of suicide than do females, although females
attempt suicide more often. Some medical professionals believe this stems from the fact that males are more
likely to end their lives through effective violent means, while women primarily use less severe methods such
as overdosing on medications.