Why They Give Up Their Lives

　In recent years,China is the only nation among 39 countries that report suicide statistics to the World Health Organization (WHO) to have more women than men killing themselves. About 90 percent of those suicides occur in rural areas. Why do so many of China's women end their lives? What are government and non-government organizations doing to address this crisis?
　　All the villagers felt sorry for 29-year-old Dai Manrong after she killed herself. Dai swallowed poison in July 2001, and died at home. But why did she want to end her life?
　　Dai committed suicide because she had been squabbling with her husband. She drank 400 milliliters of pesticide after she washed her family's clothes and cooked her children's food.
　　Who could believe it? A seemingly insignificant spat with her husband caused the young Dai to end her life. Her death was a hard blow to her husband, and the simple, veracious and slightly stubborn man refused to accept it.
　　In the small village, with about 600 people, four young women have killed themselves in less than two years. Dai was not the first, nor will she be the last.
　　Many women in China's rural areas have ended their lives. About 170,000 rural Chinese women commit suicide annually.
　　Family Conflict Is Primary Cause
　　Family arguments and conflicts are the main reasons rural Chinese women decide to kill themselves. Women aged 15 to 34 are more likely to kill themselves-motivated primarily by the desire to escape domestic violence, interference by others in their marriages, arranged marriages, friction with mother-in-laws, fighting with their husbands, and being blamed for not giving birth to a son.
　　In a recent survey on family violence, 47 percent of respondents considered domestic abuse "shameful," while 38.2 percent said it was "taking (the victim) for granted." Meanwhile, 12.7 percent of respondents indicated they had suicidal tendencies, and 9.8 percent said they were frightened. Other women skipped those four choices and marked on the survey "cannot bear" or "want divorce."
　　The women's suicide database in Beijing Huilongguan Hospital indicates 33.3 percent of suicidal victims have been abused. A woman in Wuwei, Gansu Province wrote that in her village four young women committed suicide in 1999 to escape family violence. That indicates the seriousness of the situation women face.
　　Besides, the increase in the frequency of the flowing population and changes in people's opinions have affected marriages in rural areas. Many women commit suicide to escape arranged marriages or extramarital affairs.
　　A woman villager in Yanshan County, Hebei Province drank a bottle of pesticide to escape her emotional and financial burdens after she realized her husband had a lover. After she died, her 16-year-old daughter assumed responsibility for the family. A year later, the girl drank poison too to escape the hardships foisted upon her.
　　Avoidance, grievances, threats, punishment, and disputes are other reasons that women villagers kill themselves.
　　However, many women who drank poison were not trying to commit suicide, rather they wanted to scare their husbands.
　　Yu Weiqun, 34, lived a busy and hard life for eight years after she got married. In daytime, she kept busy working on the farm; at night, she cooked, washed clothes and ran errands. Her husband, who whiled away the time, complained she hadn't done enough for the family.
　　She decided to drink poison after learning her husband had borrowed a great amount of money without consulting her.
　　 "I was in despair at that time." Yu said after having her stomach pumped.
　　Depression, Feudal Morality and Poverty Make Lives Fragile
　　Clinical research indicates most suicide victims suffered from depression. Only five percent of the 25.6 million depression patients in China in 1990 were cured.
　　But scholars who study suicide in China from a sociological viewpoint contend it is a social issue, not a mental health problem. Social pressures -- such as conflicts between lovers or family members, and failure to conform to society-are leading reasons for women's decisions to commit suicide. Under most circumstances, suicide victims have mental illnesses that make it difficult for them to cope with social pressures.
　　Traditional Chinese culture is also a factor in the high rate of suicide among China's rural women. In some cases, suicide is encouraged. In feudal times, women were encouraged to sacrifice their lives for their husbands, and to observe faithfulness and their virtues. Suicide was praised. In modern society, some young women in China's lower classes resort to suicide as a form of protest, or to escape their unbearable lives.
　　The traditional belief in rural China that "a man is superior to a woman" is another factor in women's decisions to commit suicide. In many rural areas, women are still considered private possessions of either their fathers or husbands. "In rural areas, it is hard for girls to feel they are needed, or deserve to be loved. They never learn life is valuable," says Song Meiya, editor of China Women's News, who has reported for five years about the suicide among China's rural women.
A 15-year-old girl from Hubei Province was one of the youngest suicide victims. She drank a pesticide after her father beat her and forced her to quit school.
Poverty is another contributing factor. Wang, a woman villager in Wuwei County, Gansu Province, was born to a needy family. She married into an equally poor family, and her husband died shortly after their third child was born. Wang felt she couldn't raise three children, alone, and she remarried. Her life was just as destitute-without sufficient food and clothing-after her two subsequent marriages. After years of a terrible existence, she killed herself. She left several children to struggle in destitution.
We Must Try to Save Their Lives
The suicide rate among China's rural women has become a serious social problem. Everybody must take this issue seriously and try to provide some hope to these women.
The Chinese Government has been aware of the problem for some time, and has established funds for scientific research aimed at reducing the suicide rate. Such studies, however, are complicated and challenging, as it is difficult to reach an overall, conclusive determination by investigating only limited cases against nearly 400 million rural women in destitute regions of China.
A popular belief is women commit suicide out of despair and loneliness. The fatality rate in suicidal cases is high because most rural women drank pesticides, and could not receive timely treatment due to poor transportation systems in rural China. Drinking poison is the most common way rural Chinese women kill themselves. Therefore, some departments of medical health have planned to reduce access to pesticides to try to curb the problem. An official of Ministry of Health suggested that could halve the suicide rate.
But experts contend Chinese women also need other assistance-such as psychological counseling.
A suicide-prevention hotline was established in 1990 in Shanghai. In the following seven years, 35,000 people called the hotline, including some from long distance. Half of those callers were rural women.
The Chinese Psychological Association in 1994 established the Suicide and Crisis Prevention Association. In November 1999, China held a high-level seminar on mental health in Beijing.
It was proposed during that forum that suicide prevention was one of three urgent mental health issues facing China. The nation's Ministry of Health conducted WHO's suicide prevention courses in Beijing in March 2000, in which various issues, including management of pesticides in rural areas, were discussed.
The Beijing Mental Crisis Research and Prevention Center was founded on December 3, 2002 in Huilongguan Hospital. It is China's first suicide-prevention clinic, which ensures at-risk individuals can receive professional help.
The center's primary role is to reduce the number of suicides in China; its goal is to lower the suicide rate by 20 percent within eight years; save 50,000 to 60,000 lives annually; and prevent 400,000 attempted suicides every year. The center provides nationwide technical support to clinic's physicians, administrative staff members and crisis-intervention researchers. It operates a 24-hour free "crisis hotline," offering psychological consultations, emotional support and options for at-risk people.
Fei Lipeng, the center's executive director, says there are about two million attempted suicides in China each year. It is commonly held that a person who commits suicide has a great mental impact on at least five other people. These people generally require professional assistance to ease their anguish and to retain a healthy outlook on life.
Fei suggests women in unhappy marriages want some form of a social guarantee system, which can exert pressure on their husbands to improve their actions. The women also want legal assistance when divorcing their husbands, shelters to protect them from domestic abuse, financial aid, and psychological counseling.
'Innocence' Seizes Her Life.