Suicide and Human Rights: A Suicidologist's Perspective

Suicide is violence-lethal violence, constituting serious public- and mental-health problems worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in the year 2000, more than 800,000 people worldwide had died by suicide. In many countries, suicide ranks among the top 10 causes of death. Lithuania, at times, has had the world's highest rate of suicide, a distinction often shared by Hungary. Suicide rates, however, are not static within nations. Indeed, a century ago, Russia had one of the lowest suicide rates (3 per 100,000) in the world. Within the last decades of the Soviet Union (USSR), its rates of suicide had increased significantly, from 17.1 per 100,000 in 1965 to 29.6 in 1984. This public health problem was persistently glossed over during that time (but such responses are not unusual across the world). For example, the State Statistics