Suicide rates have increased slightly over the past three years and an estimated 1.3 percent of Taiwanese older than 15 have considered suicide in the past year, the National Suicide Prevention Center said yesterday, urging people to help those showing signs of depression by convincing them to see a specialist.
Highlighting the theme of World Suicide Prevention Day today — “Working together to prevent suicide” — the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the center held a joint news conference in Taipei yesterday to raise public awareness about suicide.
About 800,000 people worldwide die of suicide each year, the center’s director Lee Ming-been (李明濱) said, citing WHO data.
Photo: CNA
Since the center was established, the suicide rate in Taiwan has dropped from 17.2 deaths per 100,000 people in 2005 to 15.7 deaths in 2015, Lee said, adding that since 2010, suicide had dropped from the nation’s top 10 causes of death.
However, over the past three years, the suicide rate has begun to increase, reaching 16.4 deaths per 100,000 people last year, an increase of 2.5 percent compared with the year before, Lee said.
Suicide became the nation’s 11th biggest cause of death, he said.
The suicide rate last year was higher for men than for women — 22 men per 100,000 people compared with 11 women per 100,000 people — the center said, but added that the rate for women increased 7.8 percent compared with 0.9 percent for men.
In 2006, the government started keeping track of suicide attempts and hospitals assist in reporting suicide attempts, with the number of attempts increasing from 25,201 people (28,996 reports) in 2016 to 26,387 people (30,619 reports) last year, the highest total so far, Lee said.
“Suicide is a complicated issue and requires the help of everyone, especially when society perpetuates the stigma surrounding suicide and mental illness, making people afraid to seek psychological counseling or medical attention,” Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said.
Chen said he hopes the government and civil groups would continue to work together to help more people understand suicide prevention, urging people to show more concern, listen to those around them and refer depressed people to seek treatment.
“In suicide prevention, everyone is a gatekeeper,” Lee said, adding that the center promotes the message that everyone can help prevent suicidal behavior by practicing “ask — respond — refer.”
People must “ask” the person who is emotionally distressed or depressed if they are thinking of harming themselves, “respond” by encouraging and staying with the person, and “refer” the person to professional counseling or medical treatment, he added.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods