On September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day, a 16-year old teenager left home after quarreling with his father because he refused to give him some money, threw himself off Tehran’s Broujerdi Bridge and died before the eyes of his horrified sister, who had followed her brother to keep an eye on him.

Just a day earlier, the news website Jam-e Jam had reported the suicides of two other teenagers. A 19-year-old who lived in Tehran’s Abu Saeed Avenue neighborhood committed suicide by taking pills after his father opposed his plan to take a trip he was planning with friends. The same day, agents of Police Precinct 109 in Baharestan Square were informed of the suicide of another 19-year-old who had taken aluminum phosphide pills, commonly used as a fumigant, after his father told him that he could not afford to buy him a car.

During the Iranian calendar year of 1396, which ended on March 20, 2018, there were 4,992 recorded suicides in Iran, according to the Deputy Minister of Sport and Youth, Mohammad Mehdi Tondgouyan, who supplied these figures to the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). This is an increase of 972 suicides over the previous year. Out of the 4,992 self-inflicted deaths, two-thirds were female and one-third male. Tondgouyan pointed out that that in recent years the number of suicides among the under-17s age group has been on the rise, and that last year, 212 adolescents took their own lives.

The provinces with the highest suicide rates are Ilam, Gilan, Tehran and Khuzestan. Tehran has the highest number of suicides, followed by Khuzestan. According to Reza Rafiei, the director of Khuzestan’s Medical Emergencies, five or six suicides are reported across the province every week.

The World Health Organization, the World Federation for Mental Health and the International Association for Suicide Prevention established World Suicide Prevention Day in 2003 to raise awareness and encourage the world community to take action to prevent suicides.

Much Deeper Roots

On July 5, Iranians were shocked by the suicide of Abolfazl, a 12-year old boy in Abadan, Khuzestan who hanged himself with a piece of rope. Why would such a young boy, a boy who was a top student in his class, decide to take his own life? “At first it seemed that he acted out of an instant emotional decision after his mother sold his mobile phone and bicycle to pay the rent,” Razieh Dehdashti, a clinical psychiatrist in Khuzestan, told IranWire, “but I believe this suicide has deeper roots. In my view, suicide by children and teenagers is a symptom of deeper troubles such as acute and long-term depression, feelings of loneliness and extreme poverty, which individuals in that age group have not learned to understand or to cope with.”

Extreme poverty can drive children to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, she says. “A child has no logical understanding of the passage of time and of the possibility that the deprivations can be resolved. The child imagines that the painful phase will continue forever. To help these children we must first eradicate the roots of poverty and infuse them with more hope.”

After the death of Abolfazl, another 12-year-old, this time a girl, also took her own life. After she had a quarrel with her parents over the purchase of a necklace from an online store, she went to her room and hanged herself with her shawl.

Razieh Dehdashti also told IranWire about the suicide of an adolescent girl that went unreported by the media. “Aida, a sixth-grade primary school student, was a top student in her class,” she said. “She hanged herself in her bedroom closet. She had been under intense stress because she was not prepared for her exams. Also, the teacher of her vocational class had asked her to bring knitting yarn the next day and the parents had not acquired it.

It was really a painful story. It seems that the little girl changed her mind in the middle. ‘We had guests so nobody noticed the noise of her flailing,’ her mother told me. One of the neighbors came and said that somebody kept banging on the wall. When the parents got to her room they found her dead. She had tried so hard to save herself that she had broken her arm.”

Poverty, the Common Thread

“In another case, I talked to the family of young boy named Saman who was only 15,” Dehdashti said. “They lived in Shiraz and he was very depressed and did not talk much. He ended his life by taking aluminum phosphide pills. In all the cases that I have come across, what has grabbed my attention has been a lack of joy, quarrels with parents over affording the necessities of life and the shaky situation of the father’s employment. These have been the common thread among all suicides.”

Dehdashti believes that economic troubles — economic instability, the decline in people’s purchasing power resulting in family quarrels, high inflation and lower wages — are responsible for increasing feelings of insecurity and bewilderment among children, leading to anxiety, stress and hopelessness that contribute greatly to the increase in teen suicides.

She also cites drought and dust storms, environmental crises that are seriously harming agriculture, especially in Khuzestan. “Drought leads to depression,” says Dehdashti, admitting that it is not necessarily the first factor that would spring to most people’s minds. “In recent years, people have become increasingly poorer due to various environmental problems and poverty has made life much more difficult for parents, who should be a haven of security for their children. Almost all of these children who have taken their lives were victims of despair and stress as a result of poverty.”

More on suicide in Iran:

The Alarming Phenomenon of Teenage Suicide in Iran, March 19, 2018

Suicide and Despair Plague Iran’s Prisons, January 11, 2018

Why are Iranian Teens Choosing Suicide?, June 12, 2016

Student Suicide on the Rise, May 21, 2015