Suicide Rate Soaring For Mexican Youth

by Pilar Franco

While the ancient Mayan culture of southeastern Mexico worshipped the goddess Ixtab, who accompanied those who committed suicide to paradise, the sharp increase in youth suicide in this country is a more complex phenomenon.

The number of suicides reported in Mexico jumped nearly 450 percent in 20 years, from 554 in 1979 to 2,459 three years ago. More than 50 percent of the cases in 1997 involved people between the ages of 20 and 30, and another 20 percent were younger than 20, according to official data.

Suicidal behavior is already seen as a serious health problem in this country, home to 100 million people, with 60 percent of the population under age 30.

Cecilia Bautista, director of the national Health Ministry's Psychiatric Hospital, told IPS that the issue is the focus of an in-depth study underway to identify the groups at highest risk.

Internationally, the highest suicide rates are reported by the nations of the former socialist bloc and the former Soviet Union, according to the World Health Organization. Lithuania, for example, reported 87 suicides per 100,000 people in 1998, compared to Mexico's five per 100,000 in 1995.

But the rise in suicides in Mexico is cause for concern. Here, as in most of the rest of the world, death from this cause is more common among men, with a ratio of three male suicides to every female suicide here. But women attempt suicide four times more often than men.

This difference reflects the tendency of men to utilize more aggressive methods than those used by women to end their own lives, Bautista said.

Mexican health authorities estimate there are 10 to 20 attempts for every consummated suicide. The problem in determining this ratio with any exactitude lies in the fact that only deaths are consistently reported, not the attempts, explained the physician.

She also pointed out that, given the seriousness of the trend among young people, the Health Ministry's mental health program has placed priority on preventing the major factors that most often lead to suicide.

Government studies reveal that 40 percent of the young people who commit suicide have suffered a major depressive episode.

They also show that 50 percent of those who have ended their own lives did so under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and 10 to 35 percent suffered some form of serious personality disorder.

One study of children ages eight to 13 indicates that 66 percent of the participants had thought about suicide and nine percent reported a clear intent.

Though there are no precise studies available, experience shows that the physical and emotional changes that occur during adolescence now take place within a new family context.

"Mexican parents, who traditionally do not encourage much independence among their children, today face the challenge of filling the long hours of the day for their adolescent children who are left home alone," points out Bautista.

"Due to economic and professional necessities, there are more and more women joining the labor market," which means their children are spending more time alone, and this "generates dangerous feelings of emptiness," she added.

In Mexico's larger cities, including the capital, "a phenomenon is quietly growing, known as 'the dark trend,' involving worship of the 'holy death,' and it is deeply rooted among urban youth," said the mental health expert.

Rituals that praise the darkness and focus on concepts such as emptiness, desperation or "utilizing life in favor of death" has attracted an unknown number of Mexican teenagers to a movement that has shown no signs of waning, she said.

In Mexico in general, urban residents are more likely to suffer some mental illness, such as anxiety, depression or panic, in contrast with rural residents, where suicide is practically nonexistent.

Authorities have recorded increasing consumption of drugs such as valium, tranquilizers whose huge demand has led to a large underground market, making it impossible to calculate the true level of consumption of these medications, said the official.

The Health Ministry's mental health program is attempting to help the groups at highest suicide risk by implementing preventive and therapeutic measures. Specialists have begun providing orientation and information at community centers, health institutions and schools.

Bautista pointed out that doctors themselves are a high-risk group for suicide. The profession has the highest alcoholism rate in Mexico as well as high amphetamine consumption, as many doctors take the drug to stay awake on the job.

"Doctors work on a daily basis with seriously ill people and, in coexisting with death, they accumulate a great deal of frustration and stress. An oncologist, for example, can control the patient's disease, but most of the time cannot cure it," she said.