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Suicide is the act of voluntarily ending one's own life. It is considered a sin in many religions and often a crime as well. Some cultures have also viewed it as a honorable way to exit certain embarrassing situations.

Suicide is generally seen as distinct from martyrdom (allowing another person to take one's own life) or reckless bravery in battle (e.g., falling on a live hand grenade to save another person). To be considered suicide, the death must be a central component and intention of the act and not an almost certain consequence. This is reflected in law in that there must be proof of intent as well as death for the act to be suicide.

Epidemiology
It is probable that the incidence of suicide is widely under-reported due to both religious and social pressures, possibly by as much as 100%. Nevertheless, from the known suicides certain trends are apparent. But since the data is skewed, attempts to compare nation to nation are statistically unwise.

Generally there are more male suicides than female, men also tend to use more violent and certain methods against a more 'passive' approach from women. However in the developed world both sexes are approaching parity. In relation to age, male suicide is a n-shaped curve with the peak at ages 50 to 60. For both sexes suicide is an event for older individuals.

Certain time trends can be related to the type of death. In the UK for example, the steady rise in suicides from 1945 to 1965 was curtailed following the removal of carbon monoxide from domestic gas. It seems that different cultures have different favourite methods, and the easy availability of lethal methods plays a role. Certainly cultures influence suicide rates.

Higher levels of social and national cohesion reduce suicide rates. Suicide levels are highest among the retired, unemployed, divorced, the childless, urbanites, or those living alone. The rate also rises during times of economic uncertainty (although poverty is not a direct cause), while the threat of widespread war is always associated with a steep fall in suicides, even in neutral countries. The majority of suicides also suffer from some psychological disorder. Depression in bipolar disorder is an especially common cause. Severe physical disease or infirmity are also recognized causes. There is no 'class' distinction to suicide.

On an individual level the meaning of suicide varies across a range of common themes. Simply seeking an end is uncommon. Stated reasons include concepts such as a reunion with the dead (bereavement is a additional factor in some suicides), a post-death oversight, a desire to cause pain through causing remorse or grief. Multiple motives are common.

Parasuicide
Rather than use the term "attempted suicide" the neologism parasuicide is more correct. Few attempted suicides are actually trying to achieve suicide. The epidemiology of parasuicides is quite different from that of successful suicides. There are many more parasuicides, the vast majority are female and aged under 35. They are rarely physically ill and while psychological factors are highly significant, they are rarely clinically ill and severe depression is uncommon. Social issues are key - parasuicides are most common among those living in overcrowded conditions, in conflict with their family, with a disrupted childhood and a history of drinking, criminal behaviour and violence. Individuals under these stresses become anxious and depressed and then, usually in reaction to a single particular crisis, they parasuicide.

The motivation is a desire for respite and to communicate feelings with a 'grand gesture'. However parasuicide cannot be dismissed, almost half of suicides are preceeded by a parasuicide and the generalized suicide rate among parasuicides is a hundred times higher than that of the population at large.

Among the famous people who have committed suicide are Boudicca, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, Hannibal, Nero, Alan Turing, Adolf Hitler, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Marina Tsvetaeva and Kurt Cobain.

In the late 18th century, Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, (The Sorrows of Young Werther), the romantic story of a young man who commits suicide because his love proves unattainable, caused a wave of suicides in Germany.

Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology, wrote a very famous study of suicide in the late 1800's.

Albert Camus saw the goal of existentialism in establishing whether suicide was necessary in a world without God.

A study of suicide in literature was written by the poet Al Alvarez, entitled The Savage God.

Jean Améry, in his book On Suicide: a Discourse on Voluntary Death (originally published in German 1976) provides a moving insight into the suicidal's mind. He argues forcefully and almost romantically that suicide represents the ultimate freedom of humanity, attempting to justify the act with phrases such as "we only arrive at ourselves in a freely chosen death", lamenting the "ridiculously everyday life and its alienation". He committed suicide in 1978.

Religious views of suicide

Buddhism

Suffering is the condition of life, caused by desire. However, to die is merely to be reborn to more suffering. The ultimate wisdom is to extinguish desire, which is only possible in this life, because any life would always be this life. Therefore live, practice, and practice to extinguish desire, and then self, for only by this path can one leave the wheel of rebirth into suffering.

Christianity

Christianity is a religion of love. It is not loving to let someone die.

Suffering as such cannot be a valid concern: modern pain medication is so effective that physical suffering more indicates a doctor's incompetence or failure of will. Mental suffering is invalid, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, who has graciously forgiven us by the free gift of his Son's payment for all sin, including yours.

Also, Christians recognize that they were bought with Christ's (God's) blood. What God bought for an infinite price is not theirs to destroy.

Islam

(to be written)

Judaism

Judaism views suicide as one of the most serious of sins. Suicide is always forbidden by Jewish law, except for three specific cases. If one is being forced by someone to commit murder, forced to commit an act of idolatry, or forced to to commit adultery or incest, then in those cases alone would suicide be permissible. However, outside those cases, suicide is forbidden, and this includes taking part of assisted suicide. One may not ask someone to assist in killing themselves for two separate reasons: (a) killing oneself is forbidden, and (b) one is then making someone else accomplice to a sin.

The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the body of scholars of Jewish law in Conservative Judaism, has published a teshuva on suicide and assisted suicide in the summer 1998 issue of "Conservative Judaism" Vol. L, No.4. It affirms the above stated prohibition, and then goes on to its real purpose - to counter the growing trend of Americans and Europeans who are asking their friends and family to help kill themselves. As the Conservative teshuva points out, many people get sick, often with terminal illnesses, but most people don't try and commit suicide. So we are obligated to try and find out why some people do ask for suicide, and we are then obligated to remove these reasons so that people don't want to kill themselves in the first place.

The Conservative responsa states that "those who commit suicide and those who aid others in doing so act out of a plethora of motives. Some of these reasons are less than noble, involving, for example, children's desires to see Mom or Dad die with dispatch so as not to squander their inheritance on "futile" health care, or the desire of insurance companies to spend as little money as possible on the terminally ill." The paper discusses the fact that some patients want to die because they are pain, but they point out that the proper response to this is not suicide, but simply better pain control and more pain medication. The paper then points out that there is crisis in medical care of elderly and terminally ill patients: Many doctors are deliberately keeping such patients in pain by refusing to grant them adequete amounts of pain killers. Some do this out of ignorance, others do it because they claim they want to avoid any possibility of the patient becoming a drug addict. Some doctors reccomend a stoic attitude. The position of Conservative Judaism holds that all such forms of reasoning are "bizarre" and cruel. With today's medications, there is no reason for people to be in this kind of perpetual torture.

It then investigates the psychological reasons for the hopelessness felt by some patients. It points out that "Physicians or others asked to assist in dying should recognize that people contemplating suicide are often alone, without anyone taking an interest in their continued living. Rather than assist the patient in dying, the proper response to such circumstances is to provide the patient with a group of people who clearly and repeatedly reaffirm their interest in the patient's continued life.... Requests to die, then, must be evaluated in the terms of degree of social support the patient has, for such requests are often withdrawn as soon as someone shows an interest in the patient staying alive. In this age of individualism and broken and scattered families, and in the antiseptic environment of hospitals where dying people usually find themselves, the mitzvah of visting the sick (bikkur Holim) becomes all the more crucial in sustaining the will to live"

Unitarian-Universalists

(to be written)

See also: euthanasia, hara-kiri, kamikaze, marytrdom