Suicides by young men treble `with rapid social changes'

Ireland has experienced a fourfold increase in suicides since 1990, with the bulk of the rise due to the deaths of young men between the ages of 15 and 24, according to Father Gerard Moloney in the January 1998 issue of Reality, the Redemptorist publication.

In an editorial, he points out that while 3,000 people have been murdered in Northern Ireland over the past 25 years, four times that number have died as a result of suicide on the island as a whole.

There has been a trebling of suicides among young men aged between 15 and 24, he writes. As a cause of death, suicide now claims more lives in that age group than road accidents or cancer.

While the recording of deaths by suicide in the Republic is on a par with, if not superior to, that found elsewhere, he writes there is still a need "for a more co-ordinated approach by the appropriate government departments to establish the facts which led to an increase in suicide, and to introduce initiatives to prevent it".

Referring to the time when suicide was part of the hidden Ireland, he writes such was the stigma attached that it was scarcely acknowledged as a fact of Irish life. The severity of church strictures combined with the criminal law to make suicide a strictly taboo subject. Now, however, there is a far greater awareness of the problem. "There is Christian burial in consecrated ground," he writes, and "the State no longer categorises it as a criminal offence".

But this unfortunately has not resulted in a reduction in the number of those taking their own lives, nor in the introduction of appropriate prevention programmes, he observes.

Although depression is given as the single biggest cause of suicide, Father Moloney points out that only a small proportion of depressed people kill themselves.

"The rapid changes which have taken place in Irish society in recent years seem to account in large measure for the increase," he writes, adding that "higher unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, an increase in marital breakdown, a reduction in the importance of the extended family, and decreased religious worship are just some of the factors" involved.

He writes there is a need for greater awareness of who those most at risk are, and that the best way of helping such at-risk people is through education, so that those experiencing suicidal tendencies know exactly where help and support can be found. There was also a need for more understanding, compassion, and professional counselling for the families of victims. The State must provide more help to those who attempt suicide, one-quarter of whom would try to do so again. "Yet there is no proper counselling for them, no co-ordinated approach to help ensure the necessary care and support."

Thanking God for the more compassionate approach in Ireland today, Father Moloney writes it is incumbent on all who speak, write, or preach about suicide "to do so in a balanced way that does not glamorise it or make it more acceptable".

Suicide was always a tragedy, which had a devastating and often long-lasting effect on the family and friends of the deceased, he writes, and "in our talking about it, we should be always careful to emphasise that tragic fact."