Moscow - The Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry has proposed a system of assistance to suicidal Russians.
"About 800,000 people, a number close to the population of a whole city, have committed suicide in Russia in the past 20 years, from 1990 through 2010," head of the Center’s department for epidemiological and social problems of mental health Boris Polozhiy said on the open house day.
Russia ranks the world’s second by the number of suicides. Most of the suicides in Russia are able-bodied men.
The average age of Russian male suicides is 45, and it is 52 for female suicides. The complex period of the 1990s had the biggest effect on the growth of suicides in Russia, the expert said.
The number of suicides was reduced thanks to professional measures. The country had 42 suicides per 100,000 residents in 1995, and 23.5 in 2010. That is too many just the same, the expert said. An average number of suicides in the world is 14 per 100,000, which means the Russian indicator exceeds the world’s average by 1.5 times.
The expert said that Russia needed a system of assistance to suicides. The former Soviet Union had such a system, but it broke down in later years.
