The document discusses suicide rates in India from 2002-2012. Some key points: - The suicide rate in India increased 22.7% from 2002-2012, with an increase reported each year up to 2011. - In 2012, the suicide rate was 11.2 per 100,000 people, marginally higher than the 2002 rate of 10.5. - Common reasons for suicide include depression, psychosis, impulsiveness, seeking help, philosophical desires to die, and accidental deaths from oxygen deprivation. - States with high numbers of suicides include Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala. Rajasthan had the highest number of mass/family suicide cases in 2012.

1. Compiled by Col Mukteshwar Prasad(Retd),
MTech,CE(I),FIE(I),FIETE,FISLE,FInstOD,AMCSI
Contact -9007224278, e-mail –
muktesh_prasad@yahoo.co.in
for book ”Decoding Services Selection Board” and SSB
guidance and training at Shivnandani Edu and Defence
Academy
Suicide

2. Introduction
 The number of suicides in in India decade
(2002–2012) has recorded an increase of 22.7%
(1,35,445 in 2012 from 1,10,417 in 2002).
 An increase in incidence of suicides was
reported each year up to 2011.
 The population has increased by 15.5% during
the decade but the rate of suicides in 2012 was
11.2 which is marginally greater than 10.5
recorded in 2002.

3. The Six Reasons People Attempt
Suicide
 Pain mixed with guilt, anger, and regret makes for a bitter drink, the
taste of which takes many months or even years to wash out of some
mouths.
 We ache to have answer: why? Why did their friend, child, parent,
spouse, or sibling take their own life?
 Even when a note explaining the reasons is found, lingering questions
remain:
 yes, they felt enough despair to want to die, but why did they feel that?
 A person's suicide often takes the people it leaves behind by surprise
(only accentuating survivor's guilt for failing to see it coming).
 People who've survived suicide attempts have reported wanting not so
much to die as to stop living, a strange dichotomy but a valid one.
 If some in-between state existed, some other alternative to death, many
suicidal people would take it.

4. The Six Reasons People Attempt
Suicide
 1.They're depressed.
 This is without question the most common reason people commit
suicide.
 Severe depression is always accompanied by a pervasive sense of
suffering as well as the belief that escape from it is hopeless and pain of
existence often becomes too much for to bear.
 The state of depression warps their thinking, allowing ideas like
"Everyone would all be better off without me" to make rational sense.
 Make them understand depression is almost always treatable.
 We should all seek to recognize its presence in our close friends and loved
ones.
 Often people suffer with it silently, planning suicide without anyone
ever knowing.
 Inquiring directly about suicidal thoughts almost always yields an
honest response. Hence do not rule out the possibility of suicidal
ideation and do inquire.

5. The Six Reasons People Attempt
Suicide
 2.They're psychotic.
 Malevolent inner voices often command self-destruction for
unintelligible reasons.
 Psychosis is much harder to mask than depression, and is arguably
even more tragic.
 The worldwide incidence of schizophrenia is 1% and often strikes
otherwise healthy, high-performing individuals, whose lives, though
manageable with medication, never fulfill their original promise.
 Schizophrenics are just as likely to talk freely about the voices
commanding them to kill themselves as not and give honest answers
about thoughts of suicide when asked directly.
 Psychosis, too, is treatable, and usually must be treated for a
schizophrenic to be able to function at all.

6. The Six Reasons People Attempt
Suicide
 3.They're impulsive.
 Often related to drugs and alcohol, some people become maudlin and
impulsively attempt to end their own lives.
 Once sobered and calmed, these people usually feel emphatically
ashamed.
 The remorse is often genuine, but whether or not they'll ever attempt
suicide again is unpredictable.
 Substance abuse and the underlying reasons for it are generally a
greater concern in these people and should be addressed as
aggressively as possible.
 4.They're crying out for help, and don't know how else to get it.
 These people don't usually want to die but do want to alert those
around them that something is seriously wrong.
 They don't believe they will die and chose methods they don't think can
kill them to strike out at someone who's hurt them, but they are
sometimes tragically misinformed.
 The prototypical example of this is a young teenage girl suffering

7. The Six Reasons People Attempt
Suicide
 5.They have a philosophical desire to die.
 The decision to commit suicide for some is based on a reasoned
decision, often motivated by the presence of a painful terminal illness
from which little to no hope of reprieve exists.
 They're trying to take control of their destiny and alleviate their own
suffering, which usually can only be done in death.
 They often look at their choice to commit suicide as a way to shorten a
dying that will happen regardless.
 6.They've made a mistake. This is a recent, tragic phenomenon in
which typically young people flirt with oxygen deprivation for the high it
brings and simply go too far. The only defense against this, it seems to
me, is education.

8. Suicide in 2013
Causes Suicide in
Jharkhand
Suicide in Bihar
Bankruptcy or
Sudden change in
Economic 14 5
Suspected/Illicit
Relation 60 29
Cancellation/Non-
Settlement of
Marriage 12 5
Not having
Children(Barrenness
/Impotency 3 2
Illness (Aids/STD) 0 1
Cancer 0 0
Paralysis 16 0
Insanity/Mental
Illness 64 20

9. Causes Suicide in
Jharkhand
Suicide in Bihar
Other Prolonged
Illness 76 17
Death of Dear
Person 5 0
Dowry Dispute 22 15
Divorce 9 8
Drug
Abuse/Addiction 78 29
Failure in
Examination 51 29
Fall in Social
Reputation 23 5
Family Problems 180 113
Ideological
Causes/Hero
Worshipping 3 1
Illegitimate
Pregnancy 4 14

10. Causes Suicide in
Jharkhand
Suicide in Bihar
Love Affairs 98 46
Physical Abuse
(Rape,Incest Etc.) 41 3
Poverty 12 1
Professional/Career
Problem 13 4
Property Dispute 18 5
Unemployment 37 5
Causes Not known 174 65
Other Causes
(Please Specity) 447 635

11. Sl. No. Year Total number
of suicides
Estimated mid-
year
population* (in
lakh)**
Rate of
suicides
(col.3/col.4)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
1 2008 125017 11531.3 10.8
2 2009 127151 11694.4 10.9
3 2010 134599 11857.6 11.4
4 2011 135585 12101.9 11.2
5 2012 135445 12133.7 11.2

16. Mass/family suicides
 189 deaths at the national level under mass/family
suicides consisting of 72 males, 67 females and 50
minors were reported as per the information available.
 The available statistics reveal that there were 15 mass
suicidal deaths consisting of 6 males, 6 females and 3
minors in mega cities.
 Recent case in NOIDA is another example
 The highest number of cases were
 reported from Rajasthan (74) followed by Andhra Pradesh
(18) and Kerala (12) out of 109 cases. Rajasthan reported
highest number of such victims (102).