
Mapping suicides: mission impossible?
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that close to 800,000 people commit suicide every year: that is around one death per second, which is a higher figure than that of war victims or homicides. Besides, for each adult who dies of suicide there may be more than 20 others who attempt it, not to mention all those deaths which are not recorded as suicides but as accidental instead.
Miguel Blesa (ex-chairman of Spanish bank Caja Madrid) was found dead yesterday with a gunshot wound to the chest. Officials confirmed today that the police’s main hypothesis was right: suicide it was. The 69-year-old banker was recently given a 6-year jail sentence over a corruption scandal that shocked Spain. Following the news, a public debate began about suicide and what could possibly trigger the desire to take one’s own life.
The horrific data released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) in Spain is not always accurate, for a number of reasons: the INE office does not always have the data from the forensic institutes before releasing its annual report; the death may be officially labelled as due to an external cause (such as falls, drowning, traffic accidents or poisoning); there may not be a suicide note nor witnesses; etc. Moreover, there are still so much taboo, pain and embarrassment surrounding this matter, that the figures may hide the reality: which is why WHO has urged countries to work on a national strategy to prevent suicides.
It is surprising that, according to the Spanish data, the older you are, the more likely you are to commit suicide (I would have expected the opposite). Mental illnesses such as depression could take any of us there, and it seems enormously difficult to imagine feeling so out of this world that your only way out is that. The second thought that keeps disturbing me is how on Earth do you decide how to kill yourself. I mean: do you jump from the top of a building? Do you sit on the railway and just wait? Or are you being more cutely creative like in Andy Riley’s bunny suicides book (see some hilarious examples here — warning: do not click if you love cute pets and you have a broken heart).
Suicide maps of Spain show peak values in Malaga, Asturias and Galicia. Research demonstrates that the rates among uneducated people are roughly double those with a university education (link in Spanish) although it is still hard to associate economic crisis with suicide rates. However, there are some studies that have linked periods of crisis with increasing suicide rates, as happened in Spain, where taking one’s life has caused more than twice the number of deaths than road traffic accidents, and it is by far the leading cause of nonnatural death.
It is almost impossible to obtain reliable data on suicides in Spain, which highlights the complexity of the problem, with enormous differences by region and culture. WHO insists: suicides are preventable and are a public health issue that must be addressed.
