HOW COMMON ARE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS OR FEELINGS AMONG PEOPLE WHO ARE DEPRESSED?
Because 15% of patients with bipolar manic depression ultimately commit suicide and the rates for unipolar depression seem to be similar, it would appear that suicidal thoughts are very common.
Between 40% and 60% of patients undergoing an acute episode of major depressive disorder have suicidal thoughts, and an even higher percentage may have a history of suicidal thoughts or wishes. Many other psychiatrists and psychophannacologists would go even further, believing mat as many as 90% of patients who appear in the psychiatrist’s office for the treatment of acute or chronic depression have at some time at least expressed the thought that “I sometimes wish I were dead,” or “My family would be better off without me,” or “I wish I could go to bed and never wake up,” or “I just wish I’d get hit by a car.”
In 1991, a total of 30,810 people killed themselves, making suicide the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. Provisional data indicate that fewer people killed themselves in 1992, dropping suicide a notch on the ladder of death. As of this writing, suicide appears to be the ninth leading cause of death, right behind a new entry in the top eight HIV infection.
But regardless of the precise figures, the likelihood is strong that far more people than reported actually died by their own hands. Because there is still a stigma against suicide, not all self-inflicted deaths are so labeled, and many forms of suicide, such as single-car accidents and death through drug abuse, are neither acknowledged nor identified as such.
Moreover, the number of people who attempt suicide without success is thought to be fully eight to ten times larger than the number of those who succeed.
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