According to official statistics, 280,000 people end their own
lives every year in China, but experts believe the situation is far
worse.
"The official figure is unrealistically low," said Michael
Phillips, an associate professor of social medicine at Harvard
Medical School and the head of research at Beijing Hui Long Guan
Hospital, which specializes in psychological intervention and
suicide prevention.
Phillips attributed the discrepancy to the lack of a death
registry system like that in many developed countries.
He added that the suicide figures are extrapolated from limited
sample data collected mainly from urban and better-off rural areas
and do not adjust for uncounted deaths.
The social stigma surrounding suicide, which extends even to the
surviving relatives of the deceased, has also proved a barrier to
the collection of reliable statistics, a physiology expert with
Peking University surnamed Zhang told China Daily.
"The current system makes it almost impossible to come up with
realistic statistics. Studies of suicide have been sporadic. The
first one was not undertaken until 1991," Zhang said.
According to Ministry of Health estimates, there are 25 suicides
per every 100,000 people in China each year, compared with 15 per
100,000 globally.
A leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 34, suicide
costs the country at least $3.5 billion a year, second only to the
US, according to the Ministry of Health.
A recent report by the ministry on the nation's biggest killers
listed suicide just after road mishaps.
Stories of elite university students committing suicide by
throwing themselves off tall buildings are the frequent subject of
newspaper reports.
Other tales of suicide are apparently less newsworthy, but
perhaps more serious. For example, the suicide rate among rural
women is about 30 per every 100,000, which is among the highest in
the world.
Left behind by migrant worker husbands, they must contend with
labor-intensive farm work, as well as the pressure of raising the
young and tending to the old.
Some of these women succumb to the pressure by drinking
pesticides, which are found in most rural households and directly
contribute to half of the total suicide deaths in China.
These women do not have access to psychological help in the
countryside, said Zhang. The situation in cities is much better,
though still far from satisfactory.
Calls to a suicide prevention hotline hosted by the Beijing
Suicide Research and Prevention Center were met with: "The line is
busy now please call later."
(China Daily August 24, 2004)