I’ve written about this before as it relates to Japan, but last week the Yomiuri Shinbun reprinted a story from a Chinese newspaper on China’s suicide rate, which included some staggering statistics (roughly translated but I think you’ll get the idea) .
According to numbers released by doctors working at the Beijing Psychological Crisis Research Center,
*Every year over 250,000 people commit suicide in China; this represents one-fourth of the total number of suicides in the world.
*Ever 2 minutes in China, a person commits suicide.
*Over 2,000,000 people attempt suicide in China every year but are unsuccessful.
*Suicide is the number one cause of death in China among people 15 to 34 years old.
*Chinese living in rural areas commit suicide 3 times more than those in urban areas.
*Chinese women commit suicide 3 times more than men.
*28% of Chinese suicides have never had formal schooling of any sort.
One of the more revelatory aspects of the article was the fact that of the over 2,000,000 unsuccessful suicides, post-attempt interviews indicated that 37% of them attempted suicide on an impulse, less than 5 minutes after the idea had come to them. In other words, their attempts were not (necessarily) related to depression, and they had not spent any time contemplating beforehand the fact that they were about to take their own lives. This, along with some of the other data released by the report, such as the high rate of women committing suicide, or the prevalence of suicide in rural areas, runs counter to (Western) preconceptions on the hows and whys of suicide.
