50,000 Indonesians Commit Suicide Every Year

[cdnvic]

50,000 Indonesians Commit Suicide Every Year

Tuesday, 09 October, 2007 | 13:11 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Based on data of the World Health Organization (WHO) Mental Health and Violence Division Benedetto Saraceno in 2005, the average number of Indonesian people who died due to suicide was 24 out of 100,000.

If calculated based on Indonesia’s current population, 220 million people, this means 50,000 Indonesians commit suicide every year. “The figure is equivalent to the number of people who die of psychotropic and illegal drug overdose,” a mental health lecturer of Trisakti University, Ahmad Prayitno, told Tempo after the seminar on “Cultural Diversity Influences Psychological Health” in the Health Department yesterday (8/10).

He explained that Indonesia has the suicide cause factors such as the unemployment number which was 40 million people; cost of living spiraling; houses broken down, bad psychosocial environment, large economic gap, migrant workers and mental illness patients who are not handled properly.

Indonesia, said Prayitno, is at the average number of the world’s suicide rate which is only 15.1 of the total population. The worst suicide number is China, with more than 250,00 people committing suicide every year; and Japan with 30,000.

Calculated globally, there are one million people in the world who commit suicide every year. This means one person commits suicide every 40 seconds. “Suicide is one of three highest causes of death for ages between 15 and 34 years old. Suicide attempt reaches 20 to 50 million people per year,” said Prayitno.

The Director of Psychological Health Services , Yulizar Darwis, said that one out of four Indonesians suffers from mental illness. The most common disturbance is depression. The comparison between the number of women and men, he said, are the same in general.

However, serious mental illness (psychotic) more often occurs in men, as minor mental illness such as depression more often occurs in women. “The number is twice that of men,” said Yulizar.

The Head of the Indonesian Psychological Specialists Association, Syamsulhadi, during the event focused on the expensive prices of new generation drugs for mental illness patients.

http://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/nasional...-109292,uk.html

[tijnebijn]

thats pretty heavy is it ?

Got no idea how the statistics in other countries are , but it sounds pretty much .