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When depression ends in suicide
“It is very important to talk about mental health. It is very important to talk about suicides. To get rid of the taboo. I have tried to commit suicide. I am a suicide survivor,” says Andrés Colao, spokesperson for AFESA, an association of family members and people with mental illness. A 2017 European Commission-funded report noted that a lack of proper diagnosis and treatment of depression may be one of the main causes of high suicide rates in Europe. Lithuania has one of the highest rates of depressive disorders, and the highest number of suicides, with 25.8 deaths for every 100,000 people in 2016, according to Eurostat. Suicide has a lot to do with mental health, but other things contribute. “It is a multifactorial issue,” Prado says. Among the main factors determining the situation in Lithuania are the country’s traumatic history, social taboos, high rates of alcohol consumption and underdeveloped prevention programs, according to a 2017 analysis.
