does anyone know the most common method of suicide? a kid at my college jumped off the 10th floor of our library, and someone i was talking to speculated about why he wouldn’t have just taken pills, if this was an act of attention, etc. don’t mean to be morbid, just curious. i would just think pills would be a lot easier.
Females usually overdose and males usually shoot themselves…
At least that’s what I’ve heard.
Firearms are the most commonly used method of suicide for men and women, accounting for 60 percent of all suicides. Nearly 80 percent of all firearm suicides are committed by white males. The second most common method for men is hanging; for women, the second most common method is self-poisoning including drug overdose.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research/suicidefaq.cfm
That’s the official line.
In truth it’s hard to say. Many suicides are deliberately made to look like accidents by the victim, either for insurance reasons or to protect the family. The insurance industry acknowledges that probably many more are not labelled as such by investigators out of sympathy for the families. Large numbers of young men die each year after their car leaves a straight stretch of hiway at high speed for no reason, or swerves in front of a bus with no skidmarks. Normally put down to ‘fell asleep at the wheel’. Numeorous people also shoot themselves crossing streams, stumble onto railway tracks and so forth. The fact is that it’s hard to know whether some deaths are suicide or not.
Not at all in Canada, since firearms aren’t allowed (except for police, criminals and neanderthals). For guys, it’s hanging or firearms (note neanderthal remark). For girls, it’s almost always drug OD. Guys here consider their own mortality by OD gay.
sorry, PC monkeys
I’d fucking jump LOL.
Hanging remains the most “popular” method in NZ, followed by gassing using a car 
I don’t think it qualifies as an act for attention if they actually go through with it like that, DuhCow. Sometimes, people survive ODs on pills. I don’t think a very high percentage survive 10-story falls.
Yeah. Thats the guy/girl thing. Girls commit suicide cuz their guy doesn’t pay enough attention. Guys commit suicide cuz they can’t.
Wow, I hope that was a joke.
It’s really all just a means to an end so I say be creative. Don’t be afraid to take chances.
Personally, I’ve considered swerving left into oncoming traffic at a high rate of speed (65-70 mph).
It might be an effective way to kill yourself, maybe not, but hell! Don’t you think that the drivers and passengers of the on-coming cars would be put equally at risk, yet probably would not share your suicidal leanings?
Regardless of its effectiveness it would be an truly antisocial way to do yourself in.
Years ago in law school I wrote a paper while I was on the law journal which had largely to do with suicide. Oh, how I remember being halfway through it and wishing I had picked a happier topic.
Run4ourLife’s data appears to be accurate with respect to suicide attempts in the United States which have been definitely identified as suicide attempts. There is no telling the number of gun suicides which are listed as accidental; the death of actor Alan Ladd comes to mind as an instance of a death ruled accidental which looked suspiciously like a suicide. IIRC, after an extended period of depression, he shot himself in the head one night while alone on an isolated part of his farm where there was no sign of a wild animal or an intruder.
Suicides with firearms outnumber homicides with firearms in western industrial countries. The disparity is especially pronounced in the United States, even though it has an abnormally high incidence of firearm homicides for a western industrial country.
It has been noted that the number of fatal one-car accidents tends to rise and fall with the general suicide rate, suggesting that the number of vehicular suicides is under-counted.
As for the idea that a person would jump off a building in order to get attention, this is entirely possible. It is also possible that he had some conflicting hope that somebody would see him and try to talk him out of it. Suicide often involves a good deal of conflicted feeling; a way to distinguish between a person who slit their own throat and a person who was murdered in this fashion is that a suicide usually has “hesitation marks”; scars from where they cut themselves ineffectually before finally being able to do the final act.
Suicide in general is not an especially rational act; for instance, people who stab themselves in the chest usually unbotton or pull aside their clothing, as though they think they might want to wear it again and don’t want to get a tear in it, or that somebody will later want to wear the garment they shed their life’s blood onto.
Why do you want to know?
Are you contemplating your own self-demise?
Do you merely have a morbid interest in the pain and suffering of others, or are you looking for the “easy” way out?
Is it important to you to understand the terminus ex machina of countless, anonymous others, or are you simply fishing for advice on how to rid the world of your own presence?
Either way…
Here in Japan, the suicide capital of the world, jumping in front of speeding trains while plenty of other rush-hour commuters watch remains common, despite the railway companies attempts to dissuade the practice by fining the surviving families the price of the fares of all the passengers who were inconvenienced by their loved one’s auto-snuff. No, the railway companies do not offer those funds as actual compensation to the aforesaid paying and inconvenienced customers… they keep it all.
Recently, it’s become “popular” to advertise on the Web for like-minded I-just-can’t-take-it-anymore-so-I-just-wanna-die-and-shuffle-off-to -whatever-oblivion-waits-beyond…just-so-long-as-I-don’t-have-to-do-it-alone-but-rather-can-be-accompanied-by-a-pair-of-young-female-virgins-type guys to advertise on the Internet, gather their “partners in death” (other males need not apply… go find your own self-sacrificial virgins of death), and, after sealing all doors and windows with duct tape, and taking a few over-the-counter sleeping pills, to turn on their little propane gas canister-fueled table-top stoves, and sink into a nice CO-induced permanent slumber.
Zzzzzzzzzz…
Hey!
Are we having FUN yet?
:rolleyes:
Hmmmm… says you.
Suicides, (particularly jumpers) here in Japan routinely leave their shoes behind… on the roof… on the train platform… just like one does upon returning “home”.
Seems perfectly rational to me.
Yeah, I know… that was redundant…
Excuse me while I go take up smoking…
Advertising for virgins to die with? I suppose the guy then says"since we are going to die we might as well make the best of our last few hours in this world. . . what you say we take our clothes off and have a threesome?" After which he does not feel like dying any more.
I would like to know how is it that in Japan a (train) company has the authority to fine people, especially people who had nothing to do with the act which caused the fine.
This sounds like UL to me, much like the “in China the families of those sentenced to die are made to pay for the bullet used for their execution”.
This is closed.
-xash
General Questions Moderator