Social emergency services prevented 7,000 people from death by suicide in 2017, according to Habibollah Massoudi Farid, the deputy director of Iran’s Welfare Organization in charge of social affairs.
A recent report by the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization said suicide has led to 4,000 deaths in the country since April, a 5 percent increase compared to 2016. More than 200 children aged 17 and younger committed suicide in the country between March 2017 and April 2018. According to the data, approximately 6 out of every 100,000 people in Iran killed themselves in 2017. Out of 4,627 recorded suicides that year, 3,262 were men and 1,365 women. Other sources provide different figures.
Seyyed Hasan Mousavi Chalak, the director of Iran Association of Social Workers, said in July that there was no data on the number of suicide deaths in the country because the law did not require hospitals to record these incidents as a separate category.
“There is no particular system of recording suicides,” Mr. Mousavi Chalak explained. “Some people are not comfortable disclosing the cause of death of a loved one because of the stigma attached to suicide. Most life insurance policies do not cover suicide, so some beneficiaries are reluctant to report the death to the coroner’s office. Also, hospitals do not have to keep a separate record of suicide deaths.”
Mohammad Mehdi Tondguyan, the head of the Ministry of Sports and Youth’s program for young people, said: “More than 200 children aged 17 and younger committed suicide in the country between March 2017 and April 2018. Individuals aged 24 to 34 have the highest suicide rate in Iran. However, the number of youths aged 17 or less who attempt suicide has risen in recent years.”
The provinces of Tehran and Yazd had the highest and lowest number of suicides in the country in 2017, respectively.
Translated from Persian by Fardine Hamdi
