Spaniards increasingly resort to suicide

Spain has been gripped by a wave in the number of suicide cases with the rate having gone up by 20% since the beginning of the financial meltdown in 2008.

Suicide has become the leading cause of unnatural death in the country outstripping road accidents, drowning or falls.

On average, ten people every day take their own lives. A total of 3,910 cases were recorded in 2014 by the National Statistics Agency.

Road collisions claimed 1,873 victims in that year. The figure represents a marked improvement from the 1989 peak of 8,218 people killed on Spanish roads.

With recession, severe austerity measures, high unemployment and a rise in house repossessions were swept in. These factors are widely believed to have contributed to the increased number of suicides, particularly among men around the age of 50 where the rate escalated by 38% during the eight year period.

Luis de Rivera, a psychiatrist at the Madrid’s Institute of Psychotherapy told the El Mundo newspaper that economic hardship alone was not to blame for the increase but also the disillusionment caused by the crisis.

"The breakdown of basic beliefs and convictions are also to blame," he explained.

"For example (the crisis) brings an end to the certainty that if you gain a university degree you will live very well. In Spain we tended to equate psychological security with economic security and have sacrificed things like family, relationships and personal well being along the way. Now we find such sacrifices have been in vain."

Despite the spike, Spain’s suicide rate – 8.4 per 100,000 people – remains among the lowest in the EU where the average is 11.6.

Far outpacing Spain are people in Lithuania, Hungary, Latvia and Belgium which threadbare austerity-hit Greece has the lowest rate, 4.7.

You must be a registered user to make comments.
Please register here to post your comments.