SUICIDE WATCH - Numbers climb as professionals grow more concerned

... Approximately 1,800 Jamaicans attempted suicide between 1999 and 2009

Tyrone Reid, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Jamaica is not among the world leaders on the suicide index, but government-compiled data reveal that the number of Jamaicans who attempt to take their own lives is alarmingly high.

Each year since 1997, scores of Jamaicans have ended their own lives and many more failed in their attempt to do so. Between 1999 and 2009, close to 2,000 persons attempted suicide.

Data supplied by the statistics department of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and published in the book titled Confronting Suicide: Helping Teens at Risk, authored by Dr Donovan Thomas, show that between 1999 and 2009, there were 627 reported cases of suicide.

However, statistics from the Ministry of Health show that during that same period, 1,725 persons were seen and discharged from the accident and emergency departments at government hospitals for attempted suicide.

Majority over 46 years

Persons from the 10-19 and 20-29 age brackets accounted for the lion's share of attempted suicide cases, with the 30-34 age cohort not far off the pace. Persons in the age 10-19 cohort accounted for 619 cases of attempted suicide, while 575 of those aged 20 to 29 tried to kill themselves.

Ironically, persons in the 46-and-over age cohort account for the bulk of actual suicides recorded between 1999 and 2009.

In 2006, it was reported that over a million people worldwide die by suicide each year, and there are at least five million additional attempts that are non-lethal but still serious. Locally, University of the West Indies professor of psychiatry and mental-health expert Frederick Hickling said that Jamaica has the third-lowest suicide rate in the world at three per 100,000.

Still, suicide is a growing concern in Jamaica. Gone are the days when the island recorded single digits in the death-by-suicide column.

In an analysis of the data on suicides in Jamaica from 1974 to 2009, Thomas, the founder and president of the suicide intervention organisation Choose Life International, wrote in his book that "the total number of suicides recorded over an eight-year period, between 1974 and 1981, is equal to the number of suicides committed in the year 2000", which has the unenviable tag of most suicides in a year.

He also stated that between 1996 and 2009, of the 779 recorded cases of suicide in Jamaica, 87 per cent (682) were males and 13 per cent (97) females, making it a ratio of approximately seven males to one female.

Some people find it hard to believe that children between zero and 10 years old commit suicide. In his book, Thomas said it was noteworthy to mention that in 1996, the statistics arm of the police force started recording child suicide separate from adult suicide. "In the year 2005, with the death by suicide of a child under age 10, the police statistics department created another category called 0-10. The records again revealed that in the year 2008, there was yet another death by suicide of another child age 0-10," read another section of the book, Confronting Suicide.

Different methods employed

Those who commit suicide employ various methods. But the data show that almost 72 per cent of those who committed the act between 1996 and 2009 did so by hanging.

According to the data, approximately nine per cent of those who killed themselves during the period under review did so by shooting. Poisoning ranked third on the list of methods used by Jamaicans to commit suicide during the 14-year period.

Drowning, stabbing, suffocation, burning, cutting themselves and jumping were among the other suicide methods employed by Jamaicans.

Between 2002 and 2009, the country recorded 420 suicides. "Of that, almost 40 per cent took place within the metropolitan area of Kingston, St Andrew and St Catherine. The parish with the greatest number of suicides over this period is St Andrew, with approximately 20 per cent of the national total," noted Thomas.

The parish outside the Kingston Metropolitan Region with the highest number of recorded suicides is Manchester, which accounts for almost 10 per cent of the national figure. Just last week, Manchester was again in the news for a vicious case of murder-suicide. In that case, a retired policeman is reported to have murdered three persons before taking his own life.