China's annual tally of 287,000 suicides

[dArKeR]

A Chinese police officer moves in to grab a woman, preventing her from killing herself by jumping off the rooftop, in Xian, Shaanxi province, Thursday. China has launched a campaign to wipe out Web sites giving advice on how to commit suicide, warning that anyone posting such information faces prosecution. China's annual tally of 287,000 suicides is almost 10 times that of the US, which experts blame on the lack of awareness of mental health and depression in China.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/photo/2005/07/16/2005039153

[smirkymonkey]

1. Lack of awareness is one thing, but why are people so depressed

in the first place? I mean, depression and suicide happen in every country, but are there certain cultural factors that would make the Chinese more depressed than other nationalities?

I am sure there are a number of factors, but I wonder why their suicide rate is TEN TIMES higher than ours? It seems like simply lack of awareness and understanding alone wouldn't account for such a disparity.

[dArKeR]

6. If you went to visit you could see some different things than we're used

to. It's very crowded with no quiet place to even seek refuge for a time.

Chinese people don't confide in anyone Chinese. When in Taiwan I and every Anglo friend I had had girls telling us every thing every secret in their lives and they felt so good and happy to be around a foreigner. Just so happy to be able to say any and everything on their minds without having some consequence.

I was told of a lot of child molestation. (It's no secrect that I don't like the Mainland Chinese KMT invaders of Taiwan.) Every case I was personally told about involved a male adult from China, the KMT Chinese, and a female child of both the KMT and Taiwanese origin.

Men are abusive in the Chinese culture. Maybe Muslim women wear vails but I'd bet Chinese women are beaten 1000 times more.

Chinese eat massive quantities of MSG. Man, that stuff makes me crawl out of my skin too!

You haven't lived until you live, (3 months at least), in Taiwan, Japan, or China.

[imenja]

2. are those raw numbers or per capita?

Because China's population is, I think, more than 10 times ours.

[punpirate]

3. No, slightly more than five times ours...

... we're close to 300 million people, while China's population is about 1.6 billion.

But, yeah, I wondered if that was comparing the aggregate numbers, as well. From what I can find, the US annual number is around 30,000, so the Chinese per capita rate is roughly double that of the US.

Cheers.

[imenja]

4. WHO statistics

China has a lower suicide rate than the US for men and far higher for women.

Suicides per 100,000
China men 13 women 14.8
US men 17.1 women 4.0

Eastern Europe has the highest rates, 60-80


http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/charts/en/

[punpirate]

5. WHO must be using a different standard of...

... determining suicide, or our rate has gone up quite a bit in the last few years. I looked for recent statistics, and for both 1996 and 2000, it said "around 30,000."

NIMH says 29,350 in 2000, for a rate of 10.6 suicides per 100,000:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/harmaway.cfm

Has to be some difference in methodology.

Cheers.