Yearning for freedom and suffering from loneliness, Chinese youngsters, apparently impacted by the nation’s unprecedented growth, are increasingly committing suicide, a survey has found.
Recent statistics from the Chinese Association of Mental Health show that suicide has become the No 1 killer of Chinese people between the ages of 15 and 34.
Suicide accounted for 26.04 per cent of the deaths in this age group last year, according to statistics. The number of suicides for each year was not given.
In 2003, the last year for which statistics are available, the Ministry of Health, recorded more than 250,000 suicides and two million attempts.
Many of the people who killed themselves were teenagers. A two-year survey by researchers at Peking University found that 20.4 per cent of the more than 140,000 high school students interviewed said they had considered committing suicide at some point.
And 6.5 per cent of the students surveyed said they had made concrete plans to kill themselves.
The survey, by researchers at the university’s Children and Teenagers’ Health Research Institute, involved 69,091 teenage boys and 72,489 girls, with an average age of 16.3. It covered 13 provinces and municipalities, including both big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, and developing areas like the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The ratios of all three steps toward committing suicide thinking about it, making a plan and taking action have all seen a sharp rise since 2002, ‘China Daily’ quoted the report as saying.