Using recently available data from China’s Disease Surveillance Points
system, we estimate that there are over 300,000 suicides in China per year; this makes
suicide one of the most important causes of death in the country and makes the suicide
rate in China one of the highest in the world. Moreover, the pattern of suicides in China
is quite different than in other parts of the world – there are more completed suicides
among females than males and rural rates are three-fold urban rates. The lack of reliable
suicide data prior to 1987 makes it difficult to determine whether the rates are currently
rising, falling, or staying constant. However, reports of suicides in the Chinese press and
case studies conducted by the authors suggest (but do not prove) that the high rates of
suicide currently experienced are related to the social changes that have occurred with the
economic reforms (which started in 1978). Another possible explanation for the high rates
of suicide is the large numbers of persons with depressive illness in China who remain
untreated. Single-cause models of suicide (i.e., social factors or mental illness) do not do
justice to the complexity of the processes involved and, therefore, do not provide useful information
about the etiology and prevention of suicide in China or elsewhere. We describe
our own dynamic model of suicide that includes five interacting factors which, we believe,
collectively determine the suicide rates in a community.