Suicide, as a human behavior, not only depends on factors external to the person, on their environment, or on how well or badly life is going for them, but also on internal factors, on their own biology. He talked about it in the article he published in January 2003. You can read here what he explained about the causes of suicide at that time before briefly exploring some more recent data on this problem.
The first comment I would like to make is that since 2003 Spain has managed to significantly reduce deaths caused by traffic accidents, but not deaths by suicide.
A recent review article on suicide published in 2020 in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine reveals that, for every completed suicide, there are twenty suicide attempts. The same article indicates that around 800,000 people die by suicide each year, which implies that there are 16 million suicide attempts each year, about 44,000 a day. Men commit suicide about three times more than women, but it is women who make the most suicide attempts.
The region of the world with the highest suicide rate is not exactly a poor region, as it is still Europe and the United States. In this set of countries, the suicide rate is currently four times higher than that of the region with the lowest rate: the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The authors of the review article include an interesting table in which they summarize the risk factors for suicide throughout life. A single look at the table allows us to state that every neighbor’s son runs a greater or lesser risk of suicide, and this fluctuates throughout life, depending on its vicissitudes.
Among the risk factors mentioned are, among others, childhood adversity, personality disorders, depression, drug abuse, and also diseases and physical problems, especially those related to a relatively advanced age. Factors external to the person include lack of social support, financial hardship, traumatic life events, such as the death of a loved one. the harmful psychological effects of the daily news published in the media and, finally, the more or less easy access to lethal weapons, particularly firearms.
The authors do not forget to mention that a constant risk factor throughout life is the genetic factor. Gene variants that we have inherited are with us from conception to death, and these variants largely determine how we adapt to life events and the social environment and how it affects our mood and behavior.
The effect of genes is always with us, although genes are rarely, if ever, invoked in the media as part of the explanation of human behavior. The genetic factor, however, clearly indicates that it is impossible in practice to achieve a zero suicide rate, since there will always be people who, due to the combination of gene variants they have inherited, will be extremely vulnerable to suicide, just as there are people who are vulnerable to obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, etc. Suicide can be seen with bitterness as the tragic end point of a genetic disease, which, like so many others, worsens with age and life circumstances. Just as no one considers it feasible to completely eliminate diabetes or obesity from the face of the earth, and many other diseases with a genetic component, it will not be possible, unfortunately, to end suicide.
However, we should not consider genetic factors only as a risk factor, since they are also, and perhaps above all, a protective factor. If, for example, we have variants of genes that produce enzymes that generate a good amount of serotonin, it will be more unlikely that negative life events lead to suicide. Fortunately, most people carry these gene variants, despite the fact that the global suicide rate may lead us to believe otherwise.
(Jorge Laborda 04/03/2023)
Works by Jorge Laborda.
WE ARE SURROUNDED!
WE ARE SURROUNDED!
Your defenses against coronavirus
Your defenses against coronavirus
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Kilo of Science Volume XII eBook
Kilo of Science Volume XII Paper
Kilo of Science Volume I. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume II. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume III. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IV. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume V. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VI. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VIII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IX. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume X. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume XI. Jorge Laborda
Matrix of homeopathy
Chained circumstances. Ed.Lulu
Chained circumstances. Amazon
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The thousand and one bases of ADN and other science stories
Adenius Fidelius
The intelligence funnel and other essays
The gods have been cloned