Suicide Rate “Sky-Rockets” in Bangladesh
Bangladesh scored 8th position in the list of high suicide-prone countries, as it witnessed nearly ten incidents of suicides among every 100,000 people, an official report of the World Health Organisation stated. According to a report by Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh published in 2015, around 7,000,000 people of Bangladesh are prone to suicide. The rate is 138.08 people per 100,000 commit suicide in Bangladesh every year.
Though is it a Muslim majority country and in Islam death my suicide condemns one’s soul to eternal hell according to the holy book of the Koran.
Experts suggested increased anti-suicide campaign in the country fearing the fatal tendency was gradually increasing with Bangladesh witnessing increasing number of suicides every day, Xinhua reported.
Not only in the lower classes is suicide now prevalent but an increase in suicidal rates in the upper middle class of the Bangladeshi society are appearing in an alarming rate.
According to a report by The Daily Star, from 2002 to 2009, 73,389 people committed suicide in Bangladesh. Of these 73,389 people, 31,857 people hanged themselves and 41,532 swallowed poison to commit suicide. Bangladesh Manabadhikar Bastabayan Sangstha, a human rights group of Bangladesh shows that from January 2011 to August 2011, 258 people committed suicide, and of them, 158 were women and the remainder were men.
Joyosree Jaman, convener of anti-suicidal campaign forum Brighter Bangladesh, said that most of the victims aged between 21 and 30 who were led by extreme emotions due to different family or social reasons.
Suicide of women
According to a 2010 report by Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital, of the 128.08 per 100,000 people who committed suicide in 2010, 89% were women and most them were unmarried. Statistics of Jatiya Mahila Ainjibi Samity,, a Bangladeshi women’s organizations shows, show that from 2006 to 2010, 40 girls committed suicide as victims of stalking. From 2001 to 2010, 4,747 women and girls committed suicide because of physical and domestic violence.
According to a report published in the Lancet published in BBC News, suicidal tendency among women in Bangladesh is higher, because they have inferior status in society. Another factor is a higher rate of illiteracy and their economic dependence on men.
Suicide appears to many Bangladeshi’s as permanent solution to their temporary problems but the experts found that most of those who survived their suicide attempts are happy as they are still living in the world.