Serious Problem for China: to Prevent Suicide

A December piece of news in Beijing: Centre on Suicide Prevention is being created, the first in China. The centre will start working, according to the newspaper People’ Daily, since March 1. The project foresees in particular a “hot line.”

Though, psychologists and psychiatrists being on duty around the clock hardly will seriously contribute to the solving the problem – to yearly reduce the number of self-murderers by 20 percent. For most of them, according to statistics, are being committed not in the capital which is prospering enough, but in the country. That are very dramatic figures: 287,000 suicides a year! Of course the most populated country is the first in suicide rate, too. Even according to the average figure, China occupies one of leading places in the world – 21 suicide deaths on 100,000 people (while the first place belongs to Latvia – 41.9 suicide deaths on 100,000 people).

Though, China is the only country in the world, where there are more suicides among women (by 25 percent), than among men. To commit suicide, peasant women as a rule use pesticides and ratsbane (62 percent of all committed suicides). So, that is not probably the hot line which can settle the situation, but some consistent measures are necessary to better the peasants’ life, especially the life of simple village women.

Andrei Krushinsky PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: https://www.pravda.ru/world/9179-suizid/