HANGING is the most common suicide method for Irish males, while women tend towards poisoning, according to a report in the Irish Medical Journal
The report, "The Psychiatric and Social Background to Suicide - The Problem of Prevention", by Dr Patricia Casey of the department of psychiatry in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, said the methods people use to kill themselves are becoming more violent.
More than 35 per cent of men who commit suicide hang themselves, while more than 40 per cent of women use poisoning. A high proportion of men and women drown themselves.
Dr Casey's report cites depression and alcohol as the main causes of suicide in the State. She said the European suicide rate had increased for the past 15 years and the increase was most marked in the Republic. However, the Republic was still near the bottom of the league table of EU countries.
To explain the increase in suicide here, she said it was necessary to prove either that mental illness was increasing or that social factors were stimulating the rise, or that some combination of both was taking place.
In the 1980s, she said, mental illness was thought to account for 90 per cent of all suicides. "However, since then socio political trends seem to have more influence. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support either claim - as there have not been any studies on this topic since 1974."
In the Republic the suicide rate rose during a period which saw increases in crime, the referral rate for alcohol abuse, and births outside marriage.
"The results indicate for all age groups as well as for the under 30s that the risk of suicide is highest in those communities that are subject to conditions of instability or deprivation, to changes in family structures, to increasing secularisation, to violence and substance abuse. Ireland is the country with, the biggest increase in youth suicide and has been subject to more rapid change than other European countries."
Predicting suicide was extremely difficult. "While it is accepted that 80 per cent of possible suicides can be predicted, at the same time more may be wrongly identified as possible victims."
Dr Casey said it was likely that no simple preventive strategy for suicide would be effective. "Sociopolitical rather than medical, solutions will be the most effective in a preventive strategy."