VIRUS: SUICIDE

The conditions of the rapidly developing world dictate the back side of progress to us. Since the beginning of the year, 60 cases of suicide have been registered in Azerbaijan, and half of them fall to young people and teenagers. What prompts young people to take a fatal step?

Fates...

A young student at the Technical University, Mammadamin Hasanli, came to his father for lunch and asked him for money to find out the results of the final examination, and after 20 minutes he was no more...

A 22-year old expectant mother took thirty psychotropic pills, because parents turned their back on her as she ran away with her boyfriend as a year ago.

A teenage university applicant hanged himself in the attic of his home. As evident from his suicide note, the reason was that he failed the entrance examinations to the university.

And that's not all the cases that happened. The sad statistics is updated with new names almost every day. And often the victims - of the circumstances or of their own choosing - do not leave any notes. The unhappy parents, orphaned after the death of their beloved child, are left wondering what prompted their child to take this terrible step. And who wants to rake over old ashes? Relationships in the family are sacred, especially as you can no longer get your child back.

Investigations by the authorities also rarely yield any result. Most often, Article 125 of the Criminal Code (incitement to suicide) is applied in such cases. Since there are no relevant documents (notes and more - editor), there is no point in looking for the culprit, and the suicide is blamed on mental disorders. However, the Interior Ministry statistics on suicides should not be considered reliable. Experts say that relatives often hide the fact of suicide. Psychotherapist Azad Isazada also confirmed this to R+: "Cases of suicide in our country are normally blamed on an accident, and we have serious problems with statistics on suicides," he says.

The epidemic of suicides

Why has this phenomenon reached such dire proportions? In an interview with R+, Azerbaijan's Chief Psychia-trist and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the Medical University Garay Garaybayli commented on the situation concerning the increasing statistics of suicide and noted that one of the factors was that in the Soviet era it was forbidden to write about suicides. Statistics were carefully concealed. Now, in addition to the fact that these cases are made public, the information content and the actual process of identifying suicides have increased. According to the psychiatrist, there may be several causes of this sad epidemic, and they vary depending on a number of factors. Age is an important one. Young people tend to commit suicide more often because of emotional problems and feelings, while in older people the causes include loneliness, illness and difficult financial situation.

It is noteworthy that the socio-economic condition of society is not really among factors that lead to suicide, for their number is very high in developed regions: in Western Europe and Scandinavia. According to official statistics, as reported by the chief psychiatrist of the country, Azerbaijan takes one of last places. According to the World Health Organization, only 0.01 per cent of people commit suicide in our country. But if we compare this figure with the fact that it is very difficult to build real statistics on suicides, the figure, to put it mildly, is losing its relevance.

Psychologists believe that Azerbaijan should establish a special centre dedicated to problems of suicide, and cases of suicide should be hidden and silenced, for it is impossible to get rid of a phenomenon if you do not have a full picture of it.

At the same time, Garay Garaybayli noted an interesting relationship. For example, in times of difficulties experienced by society: wars, economic crises and disasters - the suicide rate sharply declines, and this is due to the fact that society mobilizes. In the post-crisis period, society relaxes. People have a kind of a delayed reaction to what is happening, there is a decline and depression, and this causes an upsurge in suicides.

Risk groups

Old men, women and children have always belonged to the most vulnerable segments of society. And in the sad topic of suicide, they are no exception, because women, children, and adolescents have a complex and vulnerable psyche. And in reality, faced with the suicide of a young creation, you first think: "How?" When everything is yet to come, how can you interrupt your precious life because of some solvable problems - failure in the exams, being turned down by your beloved and problems in relations with loved ones? Why was there no one with whom you could share your problems? Why was there no one who would want to listen, support or help?

Azerbaijan has very strong national and family traditions, which are generally aimed at bringing people together and do not allow children to be alienated from their families and parents. But these traditions have their downside. First of all, one way or another, modern realities limit live sympathetic communication between people, often translating it into "virtuality"; concentration on material matters in the family cools the relations between parents and children, reducing them to the mandatory minimum. Loneliness is always a risk, Garay Garaybayli said. People who have full-fledged communication and many threads that bind them to society and the world are not suicidal. Problems arise in adolescents because of the "lack of love" in the family and because in reality it is difficult for them to talk about their problems as the parents involved in making money are not interested in them. In addition, according to the expert of the Centre for Contemporary Psychology, Zamin Ramilov, often the causes of suicide in children are drinking or drug abuse. As for the other vulnerable group - women, the problem often lies in unrequited love and often in domestic violence that a woman cannot resist.

In this case, we are confronted with the other side of local traditions when asking relevant authorities or even a psychologist for help and protection means washing dirty linen in public. Domestic problems should be solved at home, people believe. And since the unwritten laws of society are stronger, seeking help from a professional psychologist, a crisis centre for domestic violence and the law enforcement forces means an indelible shame and condemnation of society.

Depression, as mentioned above, is a real scourge of public health and almost the main cause of suicide. And here we can talk about the real world trend, which, alas, has also affected us.

The global trend

According to Garay Garaybayli, with the growth of technology and urbanization, paradoxical as it may seem, an era of de-socialization has begun. The huge influx of information that is often impossible to cope and "digest" and the severe limitation of normal live communication amid the spread of social networks are all causes of depression that overwhelms people and leads to suicide. "People collect a large amount of information, which turns into aggression if they do not spill it out." According to him, the peak of aggression in society can also affect the tendency to suicide.

In countries experiencing an economic crisis, the number of suicides significantly declines. But in the very developed countries things are worse today - the suicide rate is very high there. This strange championship is held by Lithuania and South Korea today.