Suicide – History and rates in Brazil and in the world

Suicide is a serious problem that must be faced openly and, as far as possible, as enlightened as possible.

In fact, we have to distinguish between the consummated act (suicide) and the attempted suicide (which does not take place). There are still thoughts about one’s own death, the desire that sometimes goes beyond ending one’s own life.

In this text, you will know more information about this problem. If you can help someone close, indicate the CVV website – How are you? This site, through thousands of volunteers, provides help online and over the phone, free of charge.

Definition of Suicide

Suicide is a complex phenomenon, studied by several scientific disciplines that perceive it in an antagonistic way, sometimes complementary. In general, psychiatry has seen suicide as an individual phenomenon while the social sciences have seen it as a collective behavior.

Committing suicide corresponds in Latin to occicidere, which means to cut, to crush, to break into many parts, to wound mortally (Kalina, 1981).

According to Kaplan et al (1997), suicide is a “conscious act of self-induced annihilation, best understood as a multidimensional illness in a needy individual that defines an issue for which the act is perceived as the best solution” or, simply , self-inflicted intentional death. By no means is suicide a random or purposeless act, but it represents a way out of a problem that is causing intense suffering.

Suicide: History in Brazil and in the World

Historically, society’s attitude toward suicide has ranged from admiration to hostility, punishment, irrationalism, and even superstition.

In Ancient Greece, an individual could not commit suicide without the prior consent of the community because suicide constituted an attack against the community structure, he would be considered a transgressor of the law of the polis. Suicide was politically or legally condemned. Traditional burial honors were refused to the suicide and the corpse’s hand was amputated and buried separately. In turn, the State had the power to veto or authorize a suicide, as well as induce it (Tota et al, 1994)

In some western cultures, it was the duty of the elder to kill himself in order to preserve the group, where the solidity could be threatened by the weakening of the spirit that inhabited the body of the head of the family (Tota et al, 1994).

Stoics and Epicureans saw suicide as an acceptable solution to many intolerable life situations (Goulart, 1995)

In Egypt, if the owner of the slaves or the pharaoh died, they were buried with their inanimate goods and their servants, who let themselves die next to their master’s corpse. (Tota et al, 1994).

In Rome, suicide was tried by the senate. In this country, the death of the master who killed himself was legitimized and condemning the death of the suicidal slave. The master exercised over himself the right of his social condition, being supported in the political space by public law. The slave, however, when he killed himself, went against the authority of the landlord, contesting his power and reducing his capital, which was against the prevailing family law. The suicidal gesture, in the political scenario, was condemned when dealing with a slave because the value of the act was inseparable from the social condition of the individual (Tota et al, 1994).

For several centuries, the Church did not take a specific position on the matter. In fact, early Christians committed suicide in large numbers for religious reasons. Saint Augustine and later Saint Thomas Aquinas defined the position of the Church, seeing suicide as something sinful, as something morally bad, being a transgression of the commandment “thou shalt not kill”. The Church refused funeral rites and burials for suicides. Norms prohibiting suicide have been strong in Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam. Only Eastern religions are more tolerant on the subject (Goulart, 1995)

In the Christian Middle Ages, suicide was condemned theologically. Christian Europe does away with the differences between legal and illegal suicide: to kill oneself was to attack the property of the other and the other was God, the only one who created man and who, therefore, should kill him. The individual’s life ceases to be a community asset and becomes a divine gift, and killing oneself is equivalent to sacrilege. The suicide has no right to religious rituals, his heirs do not receive material goods and the corpse is publicly punished, and may be exposed naked or burned. Suicides are equated with thieves and murderers and the State and the Church do everything to combat suicides (Tota et al, 1994).

In many cultures there were, and still are, although to a lesser extent, penalties for the victim’s relatives, such as ransoming property, prohibiting the dead person from being buried with funeral honors, even occurring in India until very recently time, more severe punishments such as burying the wife next to the suicidal husband, among others. The Brazilian Penal Code also condemns the inducement or assistance to the suicidal act when consummated. Euthanasia, assisted suicide, is an issue under discussion. In our culture, suicide is little publicized, constituting a kind of taboo because we do not approach death, old age, in short, the things that signify the finitude of being, (Goulart, 1995)

Society repressed suicide until the French Revolution, which abolished repressive measures against the practice of suicide, since suicidal behavior no longer compromised the stability of the State (Cassorla, 1992).

Finally, in sec. In the 19th century, intellectuals and philosophers questioned these attitudes and there was a change. Suicide came to be seen as a manifestation of madness, indicating that the person was not in a “healthy mind”. Such an approach was less moral and made use of discoveries in the medical and social fields. (Goulart, 1995)

Currently, suicide is not seen exclusively as a moral problem, but also as a mental health problem. Many experts on the subject believe that most suicides are compulsive and irrational. Those who take their own lives are emotionally disturbed and act compulsively or their perception of reality is so distorted by anguish that freedom of choice practically does not exist (Goulart, 1995)

Suicide rates in Brazil and in the world

International suicide rates range around 10-15 per 100,000. In some eastern European countries, Scandinavia, Japan, rates reach 25 per 100,000. In the United States, which, among international rates, between 1970 and 1980, there were more than 230,000 suicides, approximately 1 in every 20 minutes. Currently, in this country, suicide occupies the eighth position among the general causes of death, and in the age group between 15 and 24 years, it occupies the second position after accidents. These numbers only represent completed suicides, with suicide attempts estimated to be 8 to 10 times higher (Kaplan et al, 1997)

In Brazil, deaths by suicide, although underestimated, are of low magnitude when compared to other regions, but they are increasing in young adults, especially among males. Jorge(2000) considers this fact worrying, as there was no methodological change regarding the recording or data collection regarding this cause.

However, the numbers have been increasing considerably. For some authors, the growth of suicide rates is 200% to 400% in the last twenty years, in particular, among young people, (WHO, 2004).

In a study of statistics from the Ministry of Health (1998), on the causes of death of the population aged between 15 and 24 years old, in Brazil, reached the conclusion that the number of suicides in this age group grew by about 43% between the years studied , going from 3.5 per 100,000 people (in 1979, the first year of the series) to 5 per 100,000 (in 1998).

Vanrell (1996), in a preliminary study, found that the suicide mortality rate per 100,000 inhabitants in the main Brazilian capitals, which in 1980 was 5.30, has progressively increased to 7.89 in 1989, reaching values ​​around 15.76, in 1992, with a slight decline (12.67) in the following years (www.pericias-forenses.com.br/suicidio.htm).

Rio Grande do Sul is the Brazilian state that has historically had the highest suicide rates in the country. This fact has instigated researchers from various fields of knowledge, notably the social and health sciences, who have pointed to ethnicity, culture, social crises and even climatic aspects of the region, as possible factors linked to the problem (Meneguel et al, 2004).

The World Health Organization (1994) warns that suicide occupies the third place among the main causes of death in the world. It occurs both in the populations of the big centers and also in those of the small communities, in the rural zone, extending to the indigenous reserves, in these, having as hypothesis for the suicide the contact with the cities, the misery, the abandonment of the traditions and of cults. There is also a greater number of suicides among adults who live alone, especially the elderly, because devitalizing situations are experienced during this period: social isolation, unemployment, economic problems and loss of loved ones.

It is further estimated that for every suicide there are at least ten attempts serious enough to require medical attention; what’s more, for every recorded suicide attempt, there are four unknown ones (Diekstra, 1993).

The relationships between age and sex and suicide, as well as their frequency, vary greatly with regard to the country studied. In general, it is more common among men aged between 15 and 24 years, while among women, the highest occurrence is in the age group between 25 and 34 years (Kaplan et al, 1997).

The frequency of suicide among pathologies is quite variable; for example, depression may account for 45% to 70% of suicides. Nearly 95% of patients who commit suicide have a diagnosed mental illness (Kaplan et al, 1997).

According to the World Health Organization, (2004) suicide kills more than urban violence and wars. Brazil is one of the countries with the lowest number of suicides, or maybe our suicide attempts are much greater than the successes. One of the WHO’s goals is to reverse the figure of more than 1 million people who take their own lives each year. One of the plans for this goal is the promotion of the international suicide prevention day, promoted by the World Health Organization. It is projected that this number will reach 1.5 million in 2020, but suicide already accounts for more than half of violent deaths across the globe.

In Brazil, 53.3% of people who attempt suicide do not seek or are taken to medical care, but it is likely that this number is much higher. Data are often omitted due to the “requirements” of medical health plans, which do not remunerate professional or hospital treatment when the term “suicide” is reported in the patient’s file; there is even a great stigma in…