In a shocking, not to mention saddening, discovery, Lifelink, a non-profit organization working on suicide prevention based in Tokyo, said that 67% of women teenagers and those in their 20s who succumbed to suicide has in fact already tried to kill themselves before. The finding resulted from surveys conducted for a period of five years beginning 2007 on 523 members of bereaved families who had joined in support group meetings.
The study revealed that 33% of both men and women who took their own lives had attempted suicide before. However, it is the women who had a higher rate of attempted suicide than men in every generation, and the younger women, specifically, had previously tried to kill themselves. Despite having recorded a rather big number of women who attempted suicide through drug abuse and infliction of physical injuries on their bodies, local governments tend to focus on the suicide of men because 70% of overall suicide cases in the country are males. Furthermore, Lifelink said that only Tokyo’s Arakawa Ward, the northern city of Akita, and Osaka Prefectural Police provide psychological care to those who attempted suicide as a means of support.
The organization examined regional characteristics in the report using the suicide data of the National Police Agency. It looked at kinds of employment and ages of the people who committed the act, and whether they lived alone or in the company of others. In doing this, Lifelink was able to pick out characteristics that were prominent in certain regions. For instance, some cities have more suicide cases of housewives, while some have more cases involving people who are self-employed.