Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally taking over one's own life. In 2000, the World Health Organization estimated that approximately 1 million people commit suicide annually. These results are even more than those murdered or killed in the war. Therefore, suicide has become one of the top ten causes of death and one of the three leading causes in the fifteen-to-thirty-five-years age group worldwide. As the rate of suicide increases, it poses a problem to the society worldwide.

There is a wide range of reasons for committing suicide. They are categorized under three main factors. They are natural reasons, environmental reasons and sociological causes.

Researchers have become convinced that one committing suicide might be due to a chemical imbalance in the brain. A recent study reinforces this view, says David Bakish, a psychiatrist at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. David Bakish studied patients who could not stop thinking about killing themselves and who had a family history of suicide.

Detail of The Death of Socrates. A disciple is han...

English: United States Army Suicide Prevention Pos...

English: Chart showing he circumstances for suicid...

He was surprised at his discovery that the patients' brain cells had changed in an apparent attempt to make up for a lower than normal amount of a common brain chemical. This means that the desperate acts of committing suicide might be due to a genetic mutation. If researches have proved that this is true, then perhaps many people can then avoid the fate of killing themselves in the end.

One of the nurture reasons is that one might be suffering from a mental disorder, usually mood disorders and depression due to the influence that a person's environment has on him/her. Suicide is sometimes associated with mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, where the cases of suicide can be more common than in people without a history of mental illness. The World Health Organization estimated that people who...