Suicide seen as major concern

Helene (20) and Stephanie (19) skipped classes at the Lycee Chagall in Reims that Friday last March. Just before 5 p.m. the two young women, inseparable friends, met a schoolmate, Alex, at a cafe in the centre of town.

The young women said they had to shop for a birthday present for a party the following evening. "I'm an angel!" Helene said to Alex as they parted.

Later he remembered thinking the two had never looked so happy.

Instead of shopping, Helene and Stephanie took a bus to the poor Croix-Rouge suburb - home to neither - and climbed to the roof of the highest, 16-floor tower block. They left their handbags there, then jumped together to their deaths.

The letters found in their clothing talked about how hard it was to keep living, and how afraid they were of the future.

Both had failed their bacca laureat exams twice; although they had difficulties at school, their principal said they could not be considered failures.

Helene and Stephanie are only two of an estimated 12,000 French people who committed suicide last year.

Since 1982, deaths by suicide have outnumbered those in automobile accidents (8,080 in 1996) and suicide is now the leading cause of death among people aged between 25 and 34.

In the developed world, the French suicide rate ranks fourth, at 20 per 100,000, after Finland, Denmark and Austria.

By comparison, 14 Germans in 100,000 commit suicide, 12 Americans and seven Britons.

A study by the French National Institute of Demographics suggests there is something "cultural" about suicide in France. Spain, for example, has much higher unemployment, but only one third the suicide rate.

A further 150,000 French people attempt to take their own lives every year, and these figures are believed to represent only a fraction of the tragedy.

Families often disguise suicides as accidents or disappearances; a 1990 study showed that three out of four suicides in France were not reported as such.

A recent poll of French 15 to 19year-olds found that 11 per cent considered suicide in the past year, and 4 per cent had already made at least one attempt.

The French public is beginning to react to the suicide epidemic. In Paris, where the highest proportion of suicides take place, there are at least three telephone hotlines, often staffed by survivors of attempted suicides. Tomorrow marks the second annual National Suicide Prevention Day.

"Like drug abuse a few years ago, suicide is becoming a major concern of French people," Dr Michel Debout, the organiser of the Prevention Day said.

"It's increasing so rapidly that everyone feels affected by it."

The government now considers suicide a major public health problem, and the Economic and Social Council, a consultative body to the French parliament, has lent its headquarters for tomorrow's allday colloquium on suicide prevention.

In a France 2 television documentary broadcast on Monday night, Mrs Therese Hannier, the president of an association of French parents of suicide victims, warned parents to recognise the signs of distress.

Before attempting suicide, many victims give direct warnings, saying, for example, "Life isn't worth living", or more indirect messages of the "You'd be better off without me" variety.

It was only after Helene and Stephanie's joint suicide that their friends in Reims realised the two young women had tried to tell them something.

Helene gave her grandmother's pen to one friend, and a poetry book with a page on death marked to another.

France holds the sad record for the highest suicide rate among elderly people in Europe; it rises steadily with age, from 37 per 100,000 for those aged between 65 and 84 years old, to 64 per 100,000 for those aged over 85.

In the France 2 documentary, an old woman in a rest home, Mireille (86), admitted she had attempted suicide twice. Abandonment and lack of affection are the main causes of depression among the elderly.

"When the nurse pats me on the cheek and says, `Hello sweetheart', it brings me back to life," Mireille said. Social scientists have long linked high suicide rates to the search for identity and values, the loss of traditional anchors like religion, and anxiety about the future. But since 1992 they have moved back towards 19th century studies by Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim which link suicide to economic crisis.

An article by the French researcher Louis Chauvel in the latest issue of the French Review of Sociology notes that present suicide rates in France approach those of the crisis-ridden 1930s.

"Suicide is the expression of social distress - not merely personal problems," Mr Chauvel says. It affects the poor most; 61 out of 100,000 male labourers between the ages of 25 and 49 kill them selves, six times the number of white-collar workers from the same age group.