*NOTE*: I am writing this from a stand point of someone who has never suffered from depression or suicidal thoughts. The aim of this blog is just to shed some light about suicide rates across the nation and making sense of the statistics given to us every day. No offense is intended. Also sorry about the small images, just click on them and you’ll see the whole shebang!

The first historically recorded case of suicide comes from Ancient Egypt in “The Dispute between a Man and his Ba[soul]”. The story details the injustices of society against his “ba” and how his “ba” threatens to leave him forever if he decides to kill himself. The story strangely mirrors many stories of society driving a person to do the unthinkable but unfortunately it seems we haven’t learned much about how to handle the situation even 4,000 years on from our ancient cousins.

I’m writing this blog mainly because of recent events; friends and friends of friends who succumbed to suicide and other friends triumphing over it. But the main thought behind this blog is I’m not really sure what to make of the information given to us. Sure we all bow our heads at the horrible news that another Irishman (or woman) has unfortunately decided to take his or her own life, but do we really know what is happening nationwide? Does the fact that 475 people killed themselves in 2013 actually mean anything? Well hopefully in the next few minutes I’ll be able to break down the stats for you guys to make up your own mind. Oh and by the way just so you know, the fact that 475 people killed themselves for a small island nation of 4.58 million people definitely means something. In fact it’s exceedingly shit. That’s kind of the general mood of this blog so if you want something uplifting I’d advise you to do the following:

Click the little red “x” in the top right hand corner of your screen. Go to youtube.com Search “Fat people falling over”.

…you’re evening will be somewhat less bleak.

In case you guys don’t know what the CSO is (Yes the people who give the shit news that backs up the shit budget); it is the Central Statistics Office and they gather information about all walks of life in Ireland. They are very good for however, giving accurate statistics on suicide and self harm. So after a bit of digging through their database I was able to come up with a few pretty pictures.

So from the above graph we can see the eventual increase of suicide in Ireland over the last 30 years. One thing to take note of is the eventual decline throughout the boom years (approx. 1998-2007) with a sharp spike once the recession began. In March of this year the Irish Examiner published an article titles “Recession Directly to Blame for up to 560 Suicides”. The article presents details of a report by the Oireachtas Health Commitee and shows pretty good evidence to support the fact that increased job pressure has caused a spike in suicide and self harm, mainly between males aged 15-24. Here’s the link if you want a gawk:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/recession-directly-to-blame-for-up-to-560-suicides-261192.html

The idea that suicide affects males more than females is generally an accepted fact. Whether its job pressure or a case of having a stiff upper lip we can see from the below graph that males between the ages of 15 and 39 take up a huge proportion of all suicide in Ireland, having an average of 41.6% over the last 30 years.

Now I can’t say exactly why young males are much more prone to take the final step than women their own age. I neither have the expertise nor the intelligence to come up with an absolute answer. But when I started looking at other stats, I found something which I found pretty shocking.

Okay, maybe the graph doesn’t have the “wow, shocking” factor which I said earlier (excel didn’t really let me glam it up too much) but if you think carefully about what the about graph is showing us it reveals something pretty important. In two issues that are both dominated by the same gender and age why has the level of road death in Ireland dropped so dramatically and not suicide? Well it’s because we learned isn’t it? I learned from various advertising methods and so on that it isn’t a good idea for Peter to drink 9 pints and drive the country roads home at 90mph.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but anti-suicide ads have only really been surfacing in recent years. I’m not directly attributing the rise in suicide rates to lack of ads (obviously) but what I am trying to say is that the lack of talk about suicide in society in general has caused the epidemic to increase when most of our other social taboos are declining from education. I’m not exactly pointing the finger at the government but it seems now is more the time than ever to increase media exposure on suicide, it has been in the dark way too long. So what can you do about it? Well maybe the next time you’re local TD is doing the rounds around your county, ask him/her what they are going to do in terms of promoting awareness through the various media outlets the government has at its disposal. See how they answer that one.

I’d like to go into all these things in much further details but I’m aware this is an internet blog, and there are precious videos of “Let it Go” covers and Uni-lad posts to catch up with on your newsfeed so I just wanna show you one more thing.

The above figure shows the amount of suicides per each day of the week. I chose to throw this in because if you notice all the high numbers are around the weekend. And before you start thinking it, NO, I am not telling you stop drinking, calm your shit. But the fact does remain that alcohol is a driving force behind suicide, either when you’re out on a Saturday night or hung-over on a Monday morning. I threw this in because it might make you think twice about other people, who may seem a bit down on a night out and might need a helping hand, don’t always just put it down to them being hammered.

And that concludes this blog about suicide around Ireland. I know it doesn’t have a huge amount of stats to look at but hopefully it can get people to start thinking about why one of our many social taboos has been locked away hidden from the main stream public. Although through a surge of support from organisations like Pieta House, the issue is finally coming out of the closet. If anyone reading this and thinks they might need some help below is the link for Pieta House, remember “A problem shared is a problem halved”. Never a truer statement made.

http://www.pieta.ie/