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I. Introduction

A. Definition of Suicide

Suicide is an enigmatic and disconcerting phenomenon. Because of others' inability to directly occupy the mental world of the suicidal, suicide appears to elude easy explanation. This inexplicability is stunningly captured by Jeffrey Eugenides in his novel The Virgin Suicides. In the novel, the narrator describes the reactions of several teenaged boys to the suicides of five sisters. The boys keep a collection of the dead girls' belongings, repeatedly sifting through them in a vain attempt to understand their deaths.
In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptiness’s mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name. (Eugenides 1993, 246)
Undoubtedly, the challenge of simply fathoming suicide accounts for the vast array of attitudes toward suicide found in the history of Western civilization: bafflement, dismissal, heroic glorification, sympathy, anger, moral or religious condemnation. Suicide is now an object of multidisciplinary scientific study, with sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry each providing important insights into suicide. Particularly promising are the significant advances being made in our scientific understanding of the neurological basis of suicidal behavior (Stoff and Mann 1997) and the mental conditions associated with it. Nonetheless, certain questions about suicide seem to fall at least partially outside the domain of science, and indeed, suicide has been a focus of philosophical examination in the West since at least the time of Plato. For philosophers, suicide raises a host of conceptual, theological, moral, and psychological questions. Among these questions are: What makes a person's behavior suicidal? What motivates such behavior? Is suicide morally permissible or even morally required in some extraordinary circumstances? Is suicidal behavior rational? This article will examine the main currents of historical and contemporary philosophical thought surrounding these questions.

B. Characterizing Suicide

Surprisingly, philosophical difficulties emerge when we even attempt to characterize suicide precisely, and attempts to do so introduce intricate issues about how to describe and explain human action. In particular, identifying a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for suicide that fits well with our typical usage of the term is especially challenging. A further challenge is that because suicide is strongly colored by negative emotional or moral connotations, efforts to distinguish suicidal behavior from other behavior often clandestinely import moral judgments about the aims or moral worth of such behavior. That is, views about the nature of suicide often incorporate, sometimes unknowingly, views about the prudential or moral justifiability of suicide and are therefore not value-neutral descriptions of suicide. Definitions of suicide are "sometimes dependent on prior judgments about its justifiability." (Lebacqz & Englehardt 1980, 701.) Theorists about suicide often fail to divorce questions about whether an act was suicide from whether its motives were admirable or odious. Hitler, most people contend, was clearly a suicide, but Socrates and Jesus were not. (Though on Socrates, see Frey 1978) Suicide still carries a strongly negative subtext, and on the whole, we exhibit a greater willingness to categorize self-killings intended to avoid one's just deserts as suicides than self-killings intended to benefit others (Beauchamp & Childress 1983, 93-94.) Some go so far as to deny the possibility that an act of self- killing motivated by altruism can count as suicide (Margolis 1980.)
Such conceptual slipperiness befuddles moral arguments about the justifiability of suicide by permitting us to ‘define away’ self-killings we believe are justified as something other than suicide, whereas it would be desirable to identify first a defensible non-normative conception of suicide and then proceed to discuss the moral merits of various acts of suicide (Kupfer 1990.) Some philosophers, on the other hand, have embraced the apparently value-laden character of suicide, suggesting that word ‘suicide’ has as one its functions the ascription of moral responsibility, and insofar as disagreements about the extent to which agents themselves (as opposed to social conditions, medical facts, etc.) are morally responsible for their deaths persist, so too will apparently conceptual disagreements about the nature of suicide persist (Stern-Gillett 1987.)
Supposing, however, that a purely descriptive account of suicide is possible, where should it begin? While it is tempting to say that suicide is any self-caused death, this account is vulnerable to obvious counterexamples. An individual who knows the health risks of smoking or of skydiving, but willfully engages in these behaviors and dies as a result, could be said to be causally responsible for her own death but not to have committed suicide. Similarly, an individual who takes a swig of hydrochloric acid, believing it to be lemonade, and subsequently dies causes her own death but does not engage in suicidal behavior. Moreover, not only are there self-caused deaths that are not suicides, but there are behaviors that result in death and are arguably suicidal in which the agent is not the cause of her own death or is so only at one remove. This can occur when an individual arranges the circumstances for her death. A terminally ill patient who requests that another person inject her with a lethal dose of tranquilizers has, intuitively, committed suicide. Though she is not immediately causally responsible for her death, she appears morally responsible for her death, since she initiates a sequence of events which she intended to culminate in her death, a sequence which cannot be explained without reference to her beliefs and desires. (Such a case might also be an example of voluntary euthanasia.) Likewise, those who commit ‘suicide by cop,’ where an armed crime is committed in order to provoke police into shooting its perpetrator, are responsible for their own deaths despite not being the causes of their deaths. In these kinds of cases, such agents would not die, or would not be at an elevated risk for death, were it not for their initiating such causal sequences. (See Brandt 1975, Tolhurst 1983, Frey 1981, but for a possible objection see Kupfer 1990).
Furthermore, many philosophers (Fairbairn 1995, chapter 5) doubt whether an act's actually resulting in death is essential to suicide at all. It is common to speak of ‘attempted’ or ‘failed’ suicides, instances where because of agents' false beliefs (about the lethality of their behavior, for example), unforeseen factual circumstances, others' interventions, etc., an act which might have resulted in an agent's death does not.
Hence, suicidal behavior need not result in death, nor must the condition that hastens death be self-caused. It follows, therefore that, first, a correct account of suicide (contra Durkheim 1897) must emphasize the non-accidental relationship between suicidal behavior and death (i.e., death is in some respect the aim of suicidal behavior). Second, what appears essential for a behavior to count as suicide is that the person in question chooses to die. Suicide is an attempt to inflict death upon oneself and is "intentional rather than consequential in nature." (Fairbairn 1995, 58) These conclusions imply that suicide must rest upon an individual's intentions (where an intention implicates an individual's beliefs and desires about her action. (See Brandt 1975, Tolhurst 1983, Frey 1978, O'Keefee 1981) One intention-based account of suicide (similar to Graber 1981, 57) would say, roughly, that
A person S's behavior B is suicidal iff
S believed that B, or some causal consequence of B, would make her death at least highly likely, and
S intended to die by engaging in B.
This account renders the notion of suicide as self-inflicted attempted death more precise, but it is not without its shortcomings.
Condition (a) is a doxastic condition, and is meant to rule out as suicides deaths (or increased risks for death) caused by an individual's behavior where the individual causes these outcomes but does so out of ignorance of the relevant risks of her behavior, as when an individual accidentally takes a lethal dose of a prescription drug. At the same time, (a) accounts for cases such as the aforementioned terminally ill patient whose death is caused only indirectly by her request to die. Condition (a) does not require that S know that B will put her at a significantly greater risk for death, nor even that S's beliefs about B's lethality be true or even justified. Suicidal individuals often have false beliefs about the lethality of their chosen suicide methods, greatly overestimating the lethality of over the counter painkillers while underestimating the lethality of handguns, for instance. An individual could believe falsely, or on the basis of inadequate evidence, that placing one's head in an electric oven significantly increases one's chances of dying, but that behavior is nonetheless suicidal. The demand that S believe that B makes death highly likely is admittedly inexact, but it permits us to navigate between two extreme and mistaken views. On the one hand, it rules out as suicidal behavior that which is in fact only marginally more likely to cause a person's death (you are more likely to die in your car than in your living room) and is rarely utilized as a suicide method anyway. On the other hand, to demand that S believe that B certainly or almost certainly will cause S's death is too strict, since it will rarely be the case (given the possibility of intervening conditions, etc.) that B will necessarily cause S's death, and in fact, many suicidal individuals are ambivalent about their actions, an ambivalence which is turn reflected in their selecting suicide methods that are far from certain to cause death. It also allows us to distinguish genuinely suicidal behavior from suicidal gestures, in which individuals engage in behavior they believe is not likely to cause their death but is nonetheless associated with suicide attempts, while in fact having some other intention (e.g., gaining others' sympathy) in mind.
Condition (b), however, is far more knotty. For what is it to intend by one's behavior that death result? There are examples in which condition (a) is met, but whether (b) is met is more problematic. For instance, does a soldier who leaps upon a live grenade tossed into a foxhole in order to save his comrades engage in suicidal behavior? Many, especially partisans of the doctrine of double effect, would answer ‘no’: Despite the fact that the solider knew his behavior would likely cause him to die, his intention was to absorb the blast so as to save the other soldiers, whereas his death was only a foreseen outcome of his action. Needless to say, whether a clear and non-manipulable divide exists between foreseen and intended outcomes is controversial (Glover 1990, ch. 6) (It is of course possible that whether death is foreseen or intended has no bearing on whether an act counts as suicide but still bears on whether that suicide is justified.) Some would argue that given the near certainty of his dying by jumping on the grenade, his death was at least weakly intended, in Alvin Goldman's sense (Tolhurst 1983.) At the same time, cases that are commonly viewed as suicide do not exhibit an full-fledged intention to die. Current psychiatric theory holds that many examples of suicidal behavior do not aim at death but are "cries for help." In such cases, the person does not wish to die, but intends to gain others' attention in such a fashion that holds out the possibility of death. However, it seems correct to say that when a person who issues a cry for help does die, despite not intending to die, their death is neither foreseen, since the person actually intends not to die, nor wholly accidental, since the person knowingly engaged in behavior that she believed will make her death significantly more likely, making her death in an obvious sense self-inflicted. (But see Graber 1981, 58) Such a case might indicate the need for a third category besides intentional suicide and accidental death, call it unintentional death or unintended suicide.
The essential logical difficulty here resides in the notion of intending to die, for acting so as to produce one's death nearly always has some other aim or justification. That is, death is generally not chosen for its own sake, or is not the end of suicidal behavior. Suicidal behavior can have any number of objectives: the relief of physical pain, the relief of psychological anguish, martyrdom in the service of a moral cause, the fulfillment of perceived societal duties (suttee and seppuku, e.g.), the avoidance of judicial execution, revenge on others, protection of others' interests or well-being. (See Fairbairn 1995, ch. 9, for a taxonomy of the varieties of suicide.) Therefore, it is not the case that suicidal individuals intend death per se, but rather that death is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a means for the fulfillment of another of the agent's aims. (Graber 1981, 56) In short, there do not appear to be any compelling examples of "noninstrumental" self-killings in which "the overriding intention is simply to end one's life and there is no further independent objective involved in the action." (O'Keefee 1981, 357) Nor does requiring that the individual wish to be dead (Fairbairn 1995, ch. 6) address this issue, since again, what one wishes is presumably not death itself but some outcome of death. Both the grenade-jumping soldier and the depressed individual issuing a ‘cry for help’ may wish not to die insofar as they might prefer that their desires could be satisfied without dying or without putting themselves at the risk thereof. However, this is consistent with their willingly choosing to die in order to satisfy their aims.
Some might wish to add a further condition to (a) and (b) above:
S was not coerced into B-ing.
Yet again, both the concept of coercion and its applicability to instances of risky or self-harming behavior is unclear. Typically, coercion denotes interference by others. So, according to condition (c), a spy threatened with torture lest he relinquish crucial military secrets who then poisons himself did not commit suicide, some would contend, since the spy's captors compelled him to take his life. However, one can imagine a similar situation in which the agent of "coercion" is not another person. An extremely ill patient may opt to take his own life rather than face a future fraught with physical pain. But why should we not say that this patient was coerced by his situation and therefore did not commit suicide? Because of their desires, loyalties, and values, both the spy and the ill patient saw themselves as having no other alternative, given their ends, but to cause their own deaths. In both instances, the economy of the individuals' reasons for actions was modified by circumstances outside their control so as to make death a rational option where it previously was not. Thus, there does not appear to be grounds for restricting coercion only to interference by other people, since factual circumstances can be similarly coercive. Either any factor, natural, human, or otherwise, that influences an individual's reasoning so as to make death the most rational option counts as coercion, at which point condition (c) hardly functions as a restriction at all, or cases such as the spy facing torture are suicides too and (c) is unnecessary. (See Tolhurst 1983, 113-115)
This brief attempt at conceptual analysis of suicide illustrates the frustrations of such a project, as the unclear notion of suicide is apparently replaced by equally unclear notions such as intention and coercion. We may be attracted to increasingly baroque or impractical analyses of suicide (Donnelly 1998, 20) or accept that suicide is an ‘open textured’ concept instances of which are bound together only by weak Wittgensteinian family resemblance and hence resistant to analysis in terms of strict logical conditions. (Windt 1981)
An alternative to providing necessary and sufficient conditions for suicidal behavior is to view it along a continuum. In the psychological sciences, most suicidologists view suicide not as an either/or notion but as a gradient notion, admitting of degrees based on individuals' beliefs, strength of intentions, and attitudes. The Beck Scale for Suicidal Ideation is perhaps the best example of this approach. (See Beck 1979)

B.1 Suicidal occurrence and statistics

Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for more than 1% of all deaths.
More years of life are lost to suicide than to any other single cause except heart disease and cancer.
30,000 Americans commit suicide annually; an additional 500,000 Americans attempt suicide annually.
The actual ratio of attempts to completed suicides is probably at least 10 to 1.
30% to 40% of persons who commit suicide have made a previous attempt.
The risk of completed suicide is more than 100 times greater than average in the first year after an attempt - 80 times greater for women, 200 times greater for men, 200 times greater for people over 45, and 300 times greater for white men over 65.
Suicide rates are highest in old age: 20% of the population and 40% of suicide victims are over 60. After age 75, the rate is three times higher than average, and among white men over 80, it is six times higher than average.
Substance abuse is another great instigator of suicide; it may be involved in half of all cases. About 20% of suicides are alcohol abusers, and the lifetime rate of suicide among alcoholics is at least three or four times the average. Completed suicides are more likely to be men over 45 who are depressed or alcoholic.
Researchers have long debated the proportion of gay and straight teenagers who attempt suicide, with some suicide experts arguing that gay kids are no more prone to suicide than their heterosexual counterparts. But a new study by pediatrician Gary Remafedi of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, may have finally put the dispute to rest.
Published in the September edition of the American Journal of Public Health, the study found that gay and bisexual males ages 13 to 18 are seven times more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual males. However, the report showed that lesbian teens were only slightly more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual teenage females.
The study's release was painfully timely. Seventeen-year-old Jacob Orozco of Salt Lake City took his own life in early September. Orozco had been looking forward to being a member of the gay-straight alliance at East High School, which made national headlines in early 1996 when it successfully fought the Utah legislature's attempt to ban all extracurricular school clubs. "Jacob stood out as a dynamic, funny, and seemingly confident young man," wrote filmmakers Eliza Byard and Jeff Dupre in a prepared statement. "His death reminds us how much remains to be done." Byard and Dupre had met Orozco while producing the film Out of the Past, which documents the alliance's struggle.
Remafedi based his findings on a new analysis of a 1987 survey in which teenagers were asked questions about sexual orientation and suicide. Of the 36,000 respondents, 131 teenage boys and 144 girls identified themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Twenty-eight percent of the homosexual boys reported that they had attempted suicide; only 4.2% of the heterosexual boys said the same thing. Twenty percent of the teenage lesbians reported attempting suicide, 6% more than heterosexual girls, which Remafedi said falls within the margin of error of the larger study.
Remafedi, author of Death by Denial: Studies of Suicide in Gay and Lesbian Teenagers,
Said teenage boys are more susceptible to antigay peer pressure than girls. "The issue of gender nonconformity is much more of a factor with boys," he said. "In society, sissy boys are viewed differently than tomboy girls."Percentage of Minnesota public school students (grades 7-12) who have attempted suicide.

B.2 Probable causes of committing suicide

B.2.a. Verbal suicide
threats such as, “You’d be better off without me.” or “Maybe I won’t be around.”

B.2.b Hopelessness and helplessness.
When a person is being treated like he/she is not a part of everyone’s life, when a person is mistreated good, and when a person thinks that nobody loves or understands his/her feelings.



B.2.c Heart Disease and other incurable illness

A person with heart disease or any other incurable disease, loses faith that will be healed, they lose faith. And basically kill themselves, they pity on their situation and in their family, these person’s are those who are weak and has less trust.
B.2.d School and family problems
A person with school and family depression commits suicide, when a person felt betrayed and doesn’t trust anyone, school problems usually are the most major cause, failing grades, and when a student doesn’t get the award/recognition/honor, some people felt embarrassed, and discontented, that’s why most of the students kill themselves. Family problems, caused by broken family or quarrelling parents, and or sibling rivalry. This affect the behavior and the personality of a person, they become war freak and mostly they suicide because of depression.

B.2.e Looks/appearance

A person that has a bad appearance or physical disorders, commit suicide because they lose belief that someone will love them; they have many competences and insecurities in jobs, love life, family and others.

B.2.f Relationship

Break-ups, separations, wedding annulment, and loss of an important person. This ends up to a suicide when a person is depressed.
B.2.g Desperation

The desperation point may happen without any warning, or it may take decades to arrive at. There are many ways to create this intense desperation. The key thing to remember with this theory is that most likely for someone to commit suicide, they must be at a mental point of instability…that is to say that the young person becomes desperate for whatever myriad of reasons in their life and either attempts or succeeds in the act of ending their own life. Some form of depression and/or other mental disorders seem to be present in people who commit/attempt suicide.

B.2.h Psychological Disorders

Various conditions have been shown to predispose people to suicide. One of these conditions is the existence of a psychological disorder. Many people who commit suicide were suffering from some sort of psychological disorder, usually a mood disorder. Psychological disorders, or mental illnesses, can be thought of as diseases of the human mind. Psychological disorders have a variety of causes, such as chemical imbalances in the brain, and manifest in the form of abnormal behavior, which includes both overt and covert behavior. Abnormal behavior is defined by four criteria: the behavior must be distressing to the individual, it must be deviant from social norms, it must be dysfunctional and it must be dangerous to the person’s health. Mood disorders are the category of psychological disorders that deal with abnormal emotional states, for example clinical depression.

C. Preventing/ Avoiding and eliminating suicide

C.a How to stop suicide
Before everyone lust, and die because of suicide. We should help stop these persons for the killing of their own life, by the ways of prevention counseling, and giving attention. We can help eliminate, minimize or defuse suicide incidents.


C.a.1 Suicide Prevention

The following gives us a hint on how to prevent suicide, these are some signs if a person is suicidal:

C.a.1.1 Learning the following verbal cues will help you successfully intervene and prevent a suicide from happening:
· “I shouldn’t be here.”
· “I'm going to run away.”
· “I wish I were dead.”
· “I'm going to kill myself.””I wish I could disappear forever.”
· “If a person did this, would he die?”
· “The voices tell me to kill myself”
· “Maybe if I died, people would love me more”
· “I want to see what it feels like to die.”
· Complaints of aches and pains '

C.a.1.2 Recognizing certain behaviors will also allow you to intervene and prevent suicide successfully:

· Talking or joking about suicide
· Giving away possessions
· Preoccupation with death/violence
· Behaving in a risky manner such as jumping form high places, running into traffic
· Having several accidents resulting in injury such as close calls or brush with death
· Obsession with guns and knives
· Suicidal thoughts and attempts
· Constant complaining that nothing is making them happy
· Talks of worthlessness
· Frequent visit to the doctor without relief in symptoms
· Substance abuse
· Inability to concentrate, unable to find pleasure in anything.
If we are able to recognize a potential suicide situation, we need to take that situation seriously. People who talk about suicide are usually not joking. Never try and keep suicide a secret. Take action immediately to get help for the individual. Reassure the individual that we can help. Show empathy and care and give support to him or her. Remember never to pass judgment on the individual. Recognize that there are many support centers that we can approach for help. They include teachers, clergies, educators, hospitals, physicians, social workers, crisis centers and support groups. Following through with the treatment of the individual is just as important. Then we need to extend our help to the families of the victims. Help them with the trauma or loss that they are going through. Realize that they will feel abandoned, afraid, sad, embarrassed, confused, angry, guilty and lonely. Reassure them that we are there to support them all the way. Let them know its okay to have these feelings yet support them if they choose to keep these feelings repressed. Help them understand they are not alone and that help is always available when they need it. We also need to encourage the use of support groups inside the schools and within the community.






c.b Avoiding suicide
Don’t do this things:
Don't overdose on aspirin, Tylenol, caustics such as lye or oven cleaner, psychiatric drugs such as Thorazine or Elavil, tranquilizers, or sleeping pills. Don't slash your wrists.Don't shoot yourself.Don't jump from a not-very-high place or try to hang yourself.
(All these common techniques are unreliable and have often terrible effects on the survivor.)
Do this thing:
If someone tells you they are thinking about suicide, you should take their distress seriously, listen nonjudgmental, and help them get to a professional for evaluation and treatment. People consider suicide when they are hopeless and unable to see alternative solutions to problems. Suicidal behavior is most often related to a mental disorder (depression) or to alcohol or other substance abuse. Suicidal behavior is also more likely to occur when people experience stressful events (major losses, incarceration). If someone is in imminent danger of harming himself or herself, do not leave the person alone. You may need to take emergency steps to get help, such as calling 911. When someone is in a suicidal crisis, it is important to limit access to firearms or other lethal means of committing suicide.

II. All about suicide
A.HISTORY
Suicide has been part of the history of the world - people of all walks of life had committed suicide over the years. Among the famous people who have died by suicide are Boudicca, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, Hannibal, Nero, Virginia Woolf, Adolf Hitler, Mark Antony, Ernest Hemingway, Alan Turing, Sylvia Plath, Marina Tsvetaeva, Yukio Mishima, Hunter S. Thompson, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Cobain, and Vincent van Gogh.
A.1 Military
In ancient times, suicide sometimes followed defeat in battle, to avoid capture and possible subsequent torture, mutilation, or enslavement by the enemy. The Caesarean assassins Brutus and Cassius, for example, killed themselves after their defeat at the battle of Philippi. Insurgent Jews died in a mass suicide at Masada in 74 CE rather than face enslavement by the Romans.
In Roman society, suicide was an accepted means by which honor could be preserved. Those charged with capital crimes, for example, could prevent confiscation of their family's estate by taking their own lives before being convicted in court. It was sardonically said of the emperor Domitian that his way of showing mercy was to allow a condemned man to take his own life.
During World War II, Japanese units would often fight to the last man rather than surrender. Towards the end of the war, the Japanese navy sent kamikaze pilots to attack Allied ships. These tactics reflect the influence of the samurai warrior culture, where seppuku was often required after a loss of honor. It is also suggested that the Japanese treated Allied POWs harshly because, in Japanese eyes, by surrendering rather than fighting to the last man, these soldiers showed they were not worthy of honorable treatment. In fact, the Japanese unit in Syonan-to (Singapore) sentenced an Australian bombing unit to death in admiration for their bravery.
Spies have carried suicide pills or pins to use when captured, partly to avoid the misery of captivity, but also to avoid being forced to disclose secrets. For the latter reason, spies may even have orders to kill themselves if captured – for example, Gary Powers had a suicide pin, but did not use it when he was captured.
A.2 Social Protest
The Kaiowas tribe in the South American rainforest committed a mass suicide in protest of a government that was taking away their land and beliefs. This only succeeded because of massive international and national attention; whereas, this would typically fail because everyone supporting the social protest would be dead and that land would be taken regardless.
A.3 Periods of Persecution
During the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976), numerous publicly-known figures, especially intellectuals and writers, are reported to have committed suicide, typically to escape persecution, typically at the hands of the Red Guards. Some, or perhaps many, of these reported suicides are suspected by many observers to have, in fact, not been voluntary but instead the result of mistreatment. Some reported suicides include famed writer Lao She, among the best-known 20th century Chinese writers, and journality Fan Changjiang.

A.4 Philosophers
In the late 18th century, Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, ("The Sorrows of Young Werther"), the romantic story of a young man who kills himself because his love proves unattainable, was reputed to have caused a wave of suicides in Germany.
Arthur Schopenhauer would be expected to take the subject seriously, due to his bleak view of life. His main work – The World as Will and Representation – constantly uses the act in its examples. He denied that suicide was immoral and saw it as one's right to take their life. In an interesting allegory, he compared ending one's life, when under great suffering, to waking up from sleep, when experiencing a terrible nightmare. However, most suicides were seen as an act of the will, as it takes place when one denies life's pains and is thus different from ascetic renunciation of the will, which denies life's pleasures. His ideas become confused when he talks about ascetic suicides; in one part, he claims that ascetic suicide can only occur through starvation, whilst, in another part, he talks of how ascetics have fed themselves to crocodiles and been buried alive. This seems somewhat contradictory – but it is clear that, all in all, Schopenhauer had sympathy for those who commit suicide.
David Hume left an essay on suicide to be published after his death. Most of it is concerned with the idea that it is an affront to God. He argued that it was no more a rebellion against God than to save the life of someone who would otherwise die or to change anything else in the environment's position. He spent much less time dismissing arguments that it was an affront to duty to others or to oneself. He said that it could be compared to retiring from society and becoming a total recluse, which is not normally considered to be immoral – although this comparison of his would not seem to justify a suicide that left children or dependents vulnerable, in its wake. As for duty to self, he saw it as obvious that there would be times when it would be desirable not to continue living and thought it ridiculous that anyone would consider suicide unless they had considered every other option first.
Émile Durkheim, the founder of sociology, wrote a very famous study, titled Suicide in the late 1800s. In it, he stated there are four types of suicide.
G.K. Chesterton called suicide "the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence". He argued that a person, who killed himself, as far as they were concerned, destroyed the entire world.
Albert Camus saw the goal of existentialism in establishing whether suicide was necessary in a world without God.
A study of suicide in literature was written by the poet Al Alvarez, entitled The Savage God.
Jean Amery, in his book On Suicide: a Discourse on Voluntary Death (originally published in German in 1976), provides a moving insight into the suicidal mind. He argues forcefully and almost romantically that suicide represents the ultimate freedom of humanity, attempting to justify the act with phrases such as "we only arrive at ourselves in a freely chosen death", lamenting the "ridiculously everyday life and its alienation". He killed himself in 1978.
William Godwin showed his extreme optimism by stating that suicide was almost always a mistake, as more pleasure is to be gained by living. As he was a utilitarian, who saw moral judgments as based on the pleasure and pain they produced, he thus thought suicide to be immoral.
[kristen] wrote that "suicide is the ultimate form of protest". In this she saw suicide as a political act, as a last resort to preserve one's sovereignty over one's body and life. She later died by suicide while under captivity (as did several of her Red Army Faction comrades). Among the most typical methods of suicide as a part of political action have been deaths by fire and hunger strike.

B.Statistics by Country for Suicide

B.1 About these extrapolations of prevalence and incidence statistics for Suicide:
These statistics are calculated extrapolations of various prevalence or incidence rates against the populations of a particular country or region. The statistics used for prevalence/incidence of Suicide are typically based on US, UK, Canadian or Australian statistics. This extrapolation calculation is automated and does not take into account any genetic, cultural, environmental, social, racial or other differences across the various countries and regions for which the extrapolated Suicide statistics below refer to. As such, these extrapolations may be highly inaccurate (especially for developing or third-world countries) and only give a general indication (or even a meaningless indication) as to the actual prevalence or incidence of Suicide in that region.
B.2 About prevalence and incidence statistics in general for Suicide:
The word 'prevalence' of Suicide usually means the estimated population of people who are managing Suicide at any given time (i.e. people with Suicide). The term 'incidence' of Suicide means the annual diagnosis rate, or the number of new cases of Suicide diagnosed each year (i.e. getting Suicide). Hence, these two statistics types can differ: a short disease like flu can have high annual incidence but low prevalence, but a life-long disease like diabetes has a low annual incidence but high prevalence. For more information see about prevalence and incidence statistics.
B.2.a Prevalenc eof Suicide: Incidence (annual) of Suicide:
29,199 annual cases of actual suicide in 1999 USA (NVHS Sep 2001) Incidence Rate for Suicide: approx 1 in 9,315 or 0.01% or 29,200 people in USA] Extrapolation of Incidence Rate for Suicide to Countries and Regions: The following table attempts to extrapolate the above incidence rate for Suicide to the populations of various countries and regions. As discussed above, these incidence extrapolations for Suicide are only estimates and may have limited relevance to the actual incidence of Suicide in any region:

Country/Region
Extrapolated Incidence
Population Estimated Used
Suicide in North America (Extrapolated Statistics)
USA
31,523
293,655,4051
Canada
3,489
32,507,8742
Mexico
11,267
104,959,5942
Suicide in Central America (Extrapolated Statistics)
Belize
29
272,9452
Guatemala
1,533
14,280,5962
Nicaragua
575
5,359,7592
Suicide in Caribbean (Extrapolated Statistics)
Puerto Rico
418
3,897,9602
Suicide in South America (Extrapolated Statistics)
Brazil
19,763
184,101,1092
Chile
1,698
15,823,9572
Colombia
4,542
42,310,7752
Paraguay
664
6,191,3682
Peru
2,956
27,544,3052
Venezuela
2,685
25,017,3872
Suicide in Northern Europe (Extrapolated Statistics)
Denmark
581
5,413,3922
Finland
559
5,214,5122
Iceland
31
293,9662
Sweden
964
8,986,4002
Suicide in Western Europe (Extrapolated Statistics)
Britain (United Kingdom)
6,470
60,270,708 for UK2
Belgium
1,110
10,348,2762
France
6,486
60,424,2132
Ireland
426
3,969,5582
Luxembourg
49
462,6902
Monaco
3
32,2702
Netherlands (Holland)
1,751
16,318,1992
United Kingdom
6,470
60,270,7082
Wales
313
2,918,0002
Suicide in Central Europe (Extrapolated Statistics)
Austria
877
8,174,7622
Czech Republic
133
1,0246,1782
Germany
8,848
82,424,6092
Hungary
1,076
10,032,3752
Liechtenstein
3
33,4362
Poland
4,146
38,626,3492
Slovakia
582
5,423,5672
Slovenia
215
2,011,473 2
Switzerland
799
7,450,8672
Suicide in Eastern Europe (Extrapolated Statistics)
Belarus
1,106
10,310,5202
Estonia
144
1,341,6642
Latvia
247
2,306,3062
Lithuania
387
3,607,8992
Russia
15,455
143,974,0592
Ukraine
5,124
47,732,0792
Suicide in the Southwestern Europe (Extrapolated Statistics)
Azerbaijan
844
7,868,3852
Portugal
1,129
10,524,1452
Spain
4,324
40,280,7802
Georgia
503
4,693,8922
Suicide in the Southern Europe (Extrapolated Statistics)
Italy
6,232
58,057,4772
Greece
1,143
10,647,5292
Suicide in the Southeastern Europe (Extrapolated Statistics)
Albania
380
3,544,8082
Bosnia and Herzegovina
43
407,6082
Bulgaria
807
7,517,9732
Croatia
482
4,496,8692
Macedonia
219
2,040,0852
Romania
2,399
22,355,5512
Serbia and Montenegro
1,162
10,825,9002
Suicide in Northern Asia (Extrapolated Statistics)
Mongolia
295
2,751,3142
Suicide in Central Asia (Extrapolated Statistics)
Kazakhstan
1,625
15,143,7042
Tajikistan
752
7,011,556 2
Uzbekistan
2,835
26,410,4162
Suicide in Eastern Asia (Extrapolated Statistics)
China
139,430
1,298,847,6242
Hong Kong s.a.r.
735
6,855,1252
Japan
13,669
127,333,0022
Macau s.a.r.
47
445,2862
North Korea
2,436
22,697,5532
South Korea
5,177
48,233,7602
Taiwan
2,442
22,749,8382
Suicide in Southwestern Asia (Extrapolated Statistics)
Turkey
7,395
68,893,9182
Suicide in Southern Asia (Extrapolated Statistics)
Afghanistan
3,060
28,513,6772
Bangladesh
15,172
141,340,4762
Bhutan
234
2,185,5692
India
114,334
1,065,070,6072
Pakistan
17,089
159,196,3362
Sri Lanka
2,136
19,905,1652

Suicide in Southeastern Asia (Extrapolated Statistics)
East Timor
109
1,019,2522
Indonesia
25,597
238,452,9522
Laos
651
6,068,1172
Malaysia
2,525
23,522,4822
Philippines
9,257
86,241,6972
Singapore
467
4,353,8932
Thailand
6,963
64,865,5232
Vietnam
8,873
82,662,8002
Suicide in the Middle East (Extrapolated Statistics)
Gaza strip
142
1,324,9912
Iran
7,246
67,503,2052
Iraq
2,723
25,374,6912
Israel
665
6,199,0082
Jordan
602
5,611,2022
Kuwait
242
2,257,5492
Lebanon
405
3,777,2182
Saudi Arabia
2,769
25,795,9382
Syria
1,934
18,016,8742
United Arab Emirates
270
2,523,9152
West Bank
248
2,311,2042
Yemen
2,149
20,024,8672
Suicide in Northern Africa (Extrapolated Statistics)
Egypt
8,171
76,117,4212
Libya
604
5,631,5852
Sudan
4,202
39,148,1622
Suicide in Western Africa (Extrapolated Statistics)
Congo Brazzaville
321
2,998,0402
Ghana
2,228
20,757,0322
Liberia
363
3,390,6352
Niger
1,219
11,360,5382
Nigeria
1,905
12,5750,3562
Senegal
1,164
10,852,1472
Sierra leone
631
5,883,8892
Suicide in Central Africa (Extrapolated Statistics)
Central African Republic
401
3,742,4822
Chad
1,023
9,538,5442
Congo kinshasa
6,260
58,317,0302
Rwanda
884
8,238,6732
Suicide in Eastern Africa (Extrapolated Statistics)
Ethiopia
7,657
71,336,5712
Kenya
3,540
32,982,1092
Somalia
891
8,304,6012
Tanzania
3,872
36,070,7992
Uganda
2,832
26,390,2582
Suicide in Southern Africa (Extrapolated Statistics)
Angola
1,178
10,978,5522
Botswana
175
1,639,2312
South Africa
4,771
44,448,4702
Swaziland
125
1,169,2412
Zambia
1,183
11,025,6902
Zimbabwe
394
1,2671,8602
Suicide in Oceania (Extrapolated Statistics)
Australia
2,137
19,913,1442
New Zealand
428
3,993,8172
Papua New Guinea
581
5,420,2802



C. Origin of Suicide
Every self- murder chooses his own suicide method: some cut their veins, swallow murderous of medicines, hang themselves or throw themselves under a train. These suicide are afraid of death under they think their everyday life is more terrible for them.
The statistics says that only one of twenty suicide raids results in death. In other words, about one million of Russians make suicide raids every year. Experts say that the most terrible thing about suicide is that people commit them irrespective of their social status, gender and age. None of us is secured against suicide.
Before the1917 Revolution, Russian’s suicide rate was one of the lowest in the world. But the country approached the European suicide rate over the years of the Soviet regime. This is terrible but within the past 15 years Russia has become the world’s leader regarding the number of suicide committed here. In 2003, the registered suicide rate made up 39 suicides per 100,000 people. In 2004, Russia fixed the second position after Lithuania. There is no official statistics concerning Russia’s suicide rate over 2005 but experts’ forecasts are not conforming in their respect. The suicide rate in Russia is speedily increasing.
III. Conclusion
As the foregoing discussion indicates, suicide has been and continues to be a rich field of philosophical investigation. Recent advances in medical technology are responsible for the extensive philosophical attention paid to one kind of suicide, euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (PAS), while more "run-of-the-mill" suicide motivated by psychological anguish is somewhat overlooked. This is somewhat unfortunate: Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide raise issues beyond those associated with other suicides, including the allocation of health care resources and the patient-physician relationship. However, many of the same issues and concerns that surround PAS and euthanasia also surround run-of-the mill suicide, and many writers who address the former often disregard the vast literature on the latter.
Not only is suicide worthy of philosophical investigation in its own right, it is source of insight for various philosophical subdisciplines: moral psychology, ethical theory, social and political philosophy, the metaphysics of personhood, free will and action theory. Suicide is also an area where philosophical interests intersect with those of the empirical sciences. The collective efforts of philosophers and others continue to illuminate what has struck many people as the most incomprehensible and most troubling of human behaviors.












IV. CRITIQUE
Suicide is an enigmatic and disconcerting phenomenon. Because of others' inability to directly occupy the mental world of the suicidal, suicide appears to elude easy explanation. Suicide is from the Latin word sui caedere or to kill someone. It is the act of willfully ending one’s life. Suicide is frequently highly stigmatized and those experiencing suicidal ideation struggle to be board and understood suicidal ideation frequently results from the experience of pain outweighing the individuals coping strategies and resources for dealing with that pain.
Suicide is one of the major causes of death that is considered as a mortal sin because it is against the law of God. It is a sin since people have know right to take their own life and only God does. Even we are aware that suicide is a sin still many people commits suicide. It is said that someone around the Globe commits suicide every 40 seconds. Just imagine how many thousands of people die because of suicide and don’t appreciate their lives and still choose to kill their selves than to live.
Suicide testifies to life’s tragic brokenness. We believe that life is God’s good and precious gift to us but we don’t seem to see it and we are easily depressed by the problem that comes our way. When we would prefer to ignore, reject, or shy away from those who despair of life, we need to recall what we heard: God’s boundless love in Jesus Christ will leave no one alone and abandoned. We who lean on God’s love to live called to “bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
As a Christian and as a human we must join the church for their mission to prevent suicide. It is a crime because it is a form of killing. Government should also formulate a campaign for suicide prevention to minimize its cases. Suicide is a sin and it is not accepted in our society. This gives a bad impression to us and also to our family.
V. Recommendation

Based from the information gathered the researchers come up with the following recommendations.

Whoever experience suicidal thoughts should know that there were people who expect, pray, and plead for them to reach out for help. “Talk to someone. Don’t bear you hidden pain by yourself. The notion is all-too-common that one should “go it alone”: Persons are not supposed to be vulnerable, and when they are, they should conceal it and handle things on their own. There is no shame in having suicidal thoughts or asking for help.

Have a positive outlook in life. Take every problems and failures as a challenge. This act may avoid depression which is one of the major causes of suicide. Depressed people cannot treat themselves but they can help by professionals through medication or therapy, or a combination of the two. This medication will only be effective if the patient will positively take the cure given to them by the professionals. It will still depend on their attitude. Don’t lose hope no matter how life crisis or trauma you may face, always think hopefully, speak hopefully work hopefully, and act hopefully. Remind yourself that regardless of what transpires in your life, you always retain the option to choose hope.

Take yourself away from drugs, alcohol, firearm and substance abuse. Alcoholism is a factor in 30 percent of all completed suicides. If one includes people who abuse alcohol and are depressed, the figure rises to 75 percent.

Persons who have suicidal thoughts or acts should receive a family and community support and never let them feel alone and never leave them alone. It is important to listen, encourage the person to talk, and to get him or her appropriate help.

Learn to love your life and consider that it is the greatest gift from God to you so that you won’t have even a thought of community suicide. Joining in some religious organizations will help you appreciate life though sometimes it appears to be hell cause of problems and trials. It is our efforts to promote life, hope in God amid suffering and adversity, and love for troubled neighbor.

Good Charlotte - Once Upon a Time: The Battle of Life and Death

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