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China facing epidemic of suicide, depression
26 July 2005
BEIJING: Suicide is the number one cause of death among people aged 20 to 35 in China, where an estimated quarter of a million people a year – or 685 a day – take their lives, state media said yesterday.
Each year an additional 2.5 million to 3.5 million Chinese unsuccessfully attempt suicide, which stood as the fifth major cause of death among China’s 1.3 billion people, the China Daily said.
Disproportionate rates of suicide and depression among young people appear to be a direct result of increasing stress in China’s rapidly changing society.
“Society is full of pressure and competition, so young people, lacking experience in dealing with difficulties, tend to get depressed,” Liu Hong, a Beijing psychiatrist, was quoted as saying.
More than 60 per cent of people who took part in a survey of 15,431 Chinese suffering depression over the past two years were in their 20s or 30s, the newspaper said.
