At least 84 suicide attempts have been recorded in just one day in the Iranian capital, Tehran, according to the state-run Rokna news agency.
From Thursday, April 15 to Friday, April 16, 84 suicide attempts have been registered in different parts of Tehran, of which 12 suicides resulted in death.
According to the report, eight people committed suicide by self-mutilation, three by hanging themselves, 15 by poisoning and 11 by by drug overdose.
The report said 58 victims were taken to hospital after committing suicide, and 14 refused to go to hospital. One died at the scene and the others did not need to be taken to hospital.
At least 10 to 12 people have died and 74 have been rescued after being taken to hospitals.
Suicides in Iran
A major factor leading to suicides in Iran is severe economic pressure and poverty, and in the case of women, forced or child marriages. Many prisoners in Iran have also tried several times to commit suicide.
In February, Dishmok District in southwestern city was dubbed “city of suicides and self-immolation” following reports of 60 suicide attempts in the past 4 years. From these figures, 35 suicides led to the victims’ deaths. In November 2019, an Iranian sociologist said that officials refrained from announcing the high rate of suicides among residents of the western province of Ilam. Salar Kasraie said that women in the province had turned to committing suicide with pills and poison instead of self-immolations in a meeting on women’s issue in Ilam. The sociologist said that statistics showed that from 1982 to 2005, suicide rates in Iran had increased fourfold while women’s suicides had increased twofold.
Increase in suicides in one year
A government official in the Forensic Medicine Organization announced that between March 21, 2020, and November 20, 2020, the rate of suicide has increased by 4.2 percent, compared to the same period of the previous year (the state-run Etemad Daily – February 18, 2021).
“According to psychiatrists, to understand the severity of untreated depression in Iranian society, we must increase the number of suicide victims by at least 20 or 30 times to identify the actual number of suicide attempts,” wrote the state-run Etemad Newspaper. The newspaper cited unemployment, high prices, and heavy economic pressure as factors in increased suicides (the state-run Etemad Daily – February 18, 2021).
Iran hiding high rate of suicides
An Iranian sociologist said in November 2019 that officials refrained from announcing the high rate of suicides among residents of Ilam, a city in western Iran. Salar Kasraie said that women in the province had turned to committing suicide with pills and poison instead of self-immolations in a meeting on women in Ilam.
His remarks were covered by the state-run ILNA News Agency.
“Unfortunately, suicide rates in Ilam are not announced by the relevant authorities and this is a problem that I’ve had during my research into suicides among the people of Ilam,” he said in the meeting.
In June 2020, the state-run Jahan-e San’at daily said that suicides had increased by 23% in Iran.
The daily said that the increasing trend of suicides in Iran were a form of protest to poverty adding that this trend would soon turn into nationwide protests.
“By studying the map of the leading provinces in terms of the Misery Index in Iran, we can understand the ratio of inflation and unemployment to the occurrence of social protests,” the daily wrote on June 13.
