Suicide Statistics for 2010, India

Suicide Statistics for 2010 is out : 69/130 women are housewives who committed suicide every day. 139 committed suicide per day Age 0-23] 123 committed suicide per day: [30-44] .................................................................................. SUICIDES  15 Suicides took place every hour.  More than one lakh persons (1,34,599) in the country lost their lives by committing suicide during the year 2010.  It is observed that social and economic causes have led most of the males to commit suicides whereas emotional and personal causes have mainly driven females to end their lives.  Suicides because of ‘Family Problems’ (23.7%) and ’Illness’ (21.0%) combined accounted for 44.7% of total Suicides.  The percentage of suicides due to 'Property Dispute' and 'Death of dear person' showed a relatively higher increase of 48.0% and 28.9% respectively.  The overall male:female ratio of suicide victims for the year 2009 was 65:35, however, the proportion of Boys : Girls suicide victims (upto 14 years of age) was 52:48.  Nearly 70.5% of the suicide victims were married males while 67.0% were married females.  Five States – Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh – accounted for 65.8% of suicide victims in the age group 60 years and above.  69.2% of the suicide victims were married while 30.8% were un-married.  26.3% of the suicide victims were primary educated and 22.7% were middle educated while 19.8% of victims of suicide were illiterate.  1 suicide for every 5 suicides is committed by a Housewife.  41.1% of suicide victims were self employed while only 7.5% were un-employed.  Government servants were merely 1.4% of the total suicide victims.  West Bengal (11.9%), Andhra Pradesh (11.8%), Tamil Nadu (12.3%), Maharashtra (11.8%) and Karnataka (9.4%) contributed 57.2% of total suicide victims.  West Bengal has reported the highest number of suicide victims (accounting for 11.9%) in 2008 & 2009 and second highest in 2010 (accounting for 11.9%).  Southern States viz. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu including Maharashtra have accounted for 51.7% of total suicides reported in the country.  Sikkim and Puducherry has reported 45.9 and 45.5 respectively suicidal deaths per one lakh of population as against the National average of 11.4. Cont... ( i x ) SUICIDES  More than (55.9%) children suicide victims belonged to five states – Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu out of 3,130 suicide victims.  Sikkim reported the highest rate of suicide (45.9) followed by Puducherry (45.5), A & N Islands (36.1), Kerala (24.6) and Chhattisgarh (26.6).  Tamil Nadu has reported significant increase in Suicides (16,561) in 2010 over 2009 (14,424) (an increase of 14.8%) followed by Maharashtra (from 14300 in 2009 to 15916 in 2010).  The highest number of Mass/Family Suicides cases were reported from Bihar (23) followed by Kerala (22) and Madhya Pradesh (21) and Andhra Pradesh (20) out of 109 cases.  33.1% of the suicide victims consumed poison; 31.4% of the victims died by hanging, 8.8% by Fire/Self-Immolation and 6.2% by Drowning. The trend of Suicide by Hanging has been mixed during last 3 years (32.2% in 2008, 31.5% in 2009 and 31.4% in 2010) while Suicide by Poisoning has shown decreasing trend in 2007 and 2008 (34.8% in 2008, 33.6% in 2009 and 33.1% in 2010).  Bengaluru (1,778), Chennai (1,325), Delhi (1,242) and Mumbai (1,192) – the four cities together have reported almost 40.5% of the total suicides reported from 35 mega cities.  Jabalpur has reported the highest rate of 41.5 and Kolkata reported the lowest rate at 2.1 only among 35 cities.  The pattern of suicides reported from 35 cities showed that ‘Hanging’ (44.5%), ‘Poisoning’ (20.6%) and ‘Fire/Self Immolation’ (12.6%) were the prominent means adopted by the suicide victims in the cities.  There is significant increase in number of suicides (136.5%) in Patna (from 63 in 2009 to 149 in 2010) while Dhanbad showed sharp decline of 60.5% (from 152 suicides in 2009 to 60 suicides in 2010).  The suicide rate in cities (12.7) was higher as compared to All-India suicide rate (11.4).