Suicide or suicide is the intentional taking of one’s own life. The number of suicides annually around the world reaches one million people. Almost 2 people per minute in the world commit suicide. And we do not take into account the facts of self-sacrifice in war and other varieties of altruistic suicide.
Reasons for suicide
There are a lot of reasons for suicides: from unrequited love, dismissal, loss of a loved one, detection of a serious illness, by a court verdict, to purposeful driving to suicide.
Quite often, suicides are committed by people suffering from mental illness, schizophrenia, affective disorders. For example, the likelihood of suicide in classical depression increases up to 20 times compared to the average probability. About 60% of suicides suffered from depression.
The most dangerous diseases in terms of suicidal risk are depression, bipolar disorders, alcoholism and drug addiction, schizophrenia, anxiety (including panic) and personality disorders ( psychopraties ).
Approximately 40% of patients with schizophrenia make at least one suicide attempt during their lifetime. In 10-20% it is successful. With the relief of depressive symptoms, suicidal delusional thoughts may not leave the patient for a long time. Therefore, he needs supervision. If a patient with schizophernia fails to make a suicide attempt or fails for some reason, he will certainly repeat it again!
Harbingers of suicidal behavior can be low mood, suicidal statements by chance or as a joke. Suicide can provoke the patient’s feeling of an impending attack, such as a panic attack, or incipient perceptual disturbances. In order to avoid such an unpleasant condition, patients try to commit suicide.
Risk factors for suicide in schizophrenia:
1. Gender :Male;
2. Cases of suicidal attempts in history;
3. Young age;
4. First psychotic episode;
5. The predominance of productive symptoms over negative ones;
6. Significant severity of symptoms of depression;
7. Persistent disorders of perception (auditory hallucinations);
The possibility of relapse is influenced by the degree of trust of the patient to the doctor, and adequately selected therapy, with a rapid type of action and the least number of adverse reactions. A poor socioeconomic environment can increase the risk of suicide. The combination of the disease with addiction, such as alcoholism, increases this risk.
Suicide in schizophrenia and other endogenous diseases is possible in the early stages of a mental disorder, in patients with a relatively high premorbid level of intelligence and strong deep feelings about the consequences of a mental disorder . .In resistant variants of the course of schizophrenia, the percentage of suicide reaches 20%.