Suicide is the act of consciously killing oneself most often, taking death as a means or an end.

Durkheim proposed in 1897 that we call suicide ” any case of death which results directly or indirectly from an act, positive or negative, carried out by the victim himself and which he knew should produce this result. »

Traditionally, the suicide proper (resulting de facto death of the subject) to other suicidal behaviors falling within the name suicide attempts (the frequency of which would be 3 to 20 times greater):

• Suicide, a successful act of killing oneself;
• The suicide attempt, an incomplete act resulting in failure;
• The desire for suicide, an act sketched out.
• The idea of ​​suicide, which consists of a simple mental representation of the act;
• Other suicidal equivalents such as knowingly refusing treatment, certain very high-risk practices chosen without obligation …

Several estimates exist and differ depending on the evaluative sources such as theNational Institute of Health and Medical Research (inserm) andNational Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) et the Administration of Criminal Justice.

Annual rate. In 1967, C. Moine estimated the number of suicides at 8000, or 20 per day.

A 1971 report states more than 14 suicides per year in France, the second leading cause of death by violent death.

In 1990, the number of suicides occurred during the year at approximately 11.

a. After a continuous rise since the beginning of the 70s, with a climax reached in 1985 and 1986, the suicide rate seems to be slowly decreasing, while remaining at a relatively high level. Some regions are more affected than others: it is the north and north-west of the country.

Record. France would hold the record for the suicide rate of men over 75 in Europe. However, it is only at 7^st rank among 11 countries with comparable socio-economic status.

A large body of studies on suicide have brought to light many factors influencing the act and suicide itself:

• Atmospheric state (sudden barometric depressions and electrostatic hypotension are depressive and vagotonic)
• Geodemography (people commit suicide more in cities than in the countryside, and more in certain regions)
• Age (suicide increases with age)
• Physiological crises (menstruation, menopause, andropause, puberty … A greater frequency of suicide has been noted in the premenstrual period, with the maximum on the first day of menstruation.)
• The loss of the senses
• Heredity (note: the inheritance would relate to the psychotic pathology at the origin of the suicide, not to the suicidal behavior)
• Mental constitution (certain character dispositions such as impulsivity, emotionality and affective lability, but not intelligence, are more predisposed to suicidal reactions)
• Unhappy experiences, failures, conflict situations, apparent occasional events (bereavement, money problems, rivalry, etc.)
• The weekly distribution (we would commit suicide more on the day corresponding to the return to work)
• Family (the frequency is higher among single people than among married people, among widowers than among married people, among married people without children than among married people with children)
• The profession (there would be more suicides in the upper and middle classes than in the lower classes)
• Political, social, economic events.

Many mental illnesses increase the risk of suicide:

• Depressive states (melancholy, reaction to a painful event, neurotic)
• Schizophrenia
• Chronic delusions
• Neuroses
• Drug addiction
• Alcoholism
• Mental retardation
• Central nervous system disorders

Suicide is an integral part of the history of many peoples.

In East Asia, the sages frequently committed suicide during religious festivals to attain nirvana, under the influence of Brahmanism. In China, it was customary to commit suicide in order to flee from the enemy or to protest: after Confucius’ death, nearly 500 of his disciples threw themselves into the void in reaction to the destruction of his books. In Japan, nobles could easily kill themselves when their honor was tainted.

In Greece, then later throughout Christendom, suicide is prohibited and repressed: ” Thou shalt not kill, neither another nor yourself, for he who kills himself is not the murderer of a man? “. Despite the great social misery, suicides were minimal. In the XNUMXth century, under the impetus of individual freedoms, suicide was decriminalized, but it was especially in the XNUMXth century that its frequency increased drastically. One suspects then the economic, political and human transformations which mark out the Industrial Revolution. 

People who commit suicide are insane.

This is a theory that has long prevailed among most psychiatrists like Geroget, Falret, Chaslin or Adler. In 1932, Achille Delmas argued that among suicides, 90% were cyclothimic and 10% hyperemotional, which led him to conclude “that one had to be more or less mad to commit suicide”. This theory is today recognized as being inaccurate. 

People who commit suicide are in a momentary pathological state.

Other cautious authors prefer to say that people who commit suicide are not all sick, far from it, but that they are all in a momentary pathological state during the suicide act. Thus, for Halbwachs, in 1930, it is the “social vacuum” created around the individual that causes suicide. According to this theory, there are 3 suicidogenic mechanisms:

– The disintegration of the social group (excess of individualization): this is the selfish suicide ;

– Social over-integration (insufficient individualization): we are talking about selfless suicide primitive societies.

– The anarchic dislocation of the social group (during economic, political or social crises): this is the suicide anomique.

– Excessive social regulation: this is the fatalistic suicide. 

In France, the most frequent mode of suicide is hanging (41% for men, 26% for women), followed by weapons for men (30%), toxic substances (24,5%) and drowning (20%) for women.

The choice of the means depends on several factors, among which the imitation of an act observed, read or heard and the faculty of execution.

A study conducted in the United Kingdom by researcher Barraclough showed that 2 in 3 suicides see their doctor in the month before the suicide. 

About half of the deaths in French prisons are suicides. Several studies have shown that incarceration was a high risk moment and that defendants committed suicide more than convicts.

Unsurprisingly, the frequency of suicides is higher among inmates who are alone in their cells or placed in disciplinary cells. On the other hand, more surprisingly, single people commit suicide less than married people, while the opposite is observed in the free environment. 

 « The only clear thing I could perceive was the word “suicide” itself, the sound of which I associated with the idea of ​​fire and the serpentine form of kriss, and this association became so ingrained in my mind that even today I cannot write the word suicide without seeing the rajah in its setting of flames: there are some whose shape reminds me as much as the hissing, not only of the torsion of the body on the verge of falling, but the sinusoidal nature of the blade; which vibrates curiously and creeps in, so to speak, like the burst of fire or the barely foamy angles of a frozen lightning; cide, which finally intervenes to conclude everything with its acidic taste implying something incisive and sharp » Michel Leiris in The Age of Man

« Each year, suicide causes as many deaths as a natural disaster would cause by wiping off the world map one of the cities such as Sochaux, Chinon, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Chamonix. » C. Monk