Suicide in Iran
Suicide in Iran is believed to be a growing concern in recent years. Iran rates third highest among Islamic countries. According to statistics, each day more than 13 people take their lives by suicide in Iran; some studies show that in 2013, for instance, the average rate of suicide in Iran was 6 in every 100,000 people. Economic problems, mental illnesses, cultural obligations, political issues and social pressures are the major factors for suicide commission in Iran; the word "suicide" in Persian dictionaries like Moeen and Amid, has been defined as "killing self by any means". The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use of the word "suicide" by Walter Charleton in 1651; the word suicide in French was used by Pierre Desfontaines for the first time. This word was accepted by the French Academy of Sciences. Ali EslamiNasab, considers the combination of two Latin words sui and cide a correct term for suicide; the concept of suicide in the Moaser Persian Dictionary is defined as "the intentional termination of life by one's own intention and own hands".
The first sociological analysis of suicide has been put forward by the French sociologist, Émile Durkheim. He states in his 1897 book suicide that "suicide is any type of death, a direct or indirect cause of the victim's own positive or negative acts that he/she was aware of in advance". Durkheim categorized suicides into the following four types all of which are related to the relationship of the individual to society: 1- Egoistic suicide, the cause of individualism and the separation from the society. 2- Altruistic suicide that occurs when the individual has a deep attachment to the society. 3- Anomic suicide, the cause of anomie and lawlessness in the society. 4- Fatalistic suicide that occurs when the wills and incentives of the members of the society is under the restrict control of the society. In the late 19th century, Sigmund Freud was the first to review suicide from a psychological point of view, he considered suicide as "the ultimate anger towards self caused by the unconscious". Freud, divided human instincts into two categories: death instinct and life instinct.
He believed that the death instinct starts after birth and intends to return in the future. This instinct is the cause of extinction and termination of generation. On the other hand, the life instinct is the cause of friendship, reproduction. Freud developed his theory of death instinct, in opposition to libido. Erwin Stengel is the first person to differentiate between suicide and suicide intention from a psychological point of view. After some research, he dedicated an independent branch of psychology to the suicide intention. Research has suggested that unlike suicide the intention of suicide has other goals than just simple "self destruction". Kayral has mentioned the following four goals of suicide intention: 1- an invitation or asking for help and support. According to Eslaminasab, the following five behaviors of suicide ideation, threatening to commit suicide, suicide gesture, suicide attempt and successful suicide, are categorized under suicidal behavior; the term "suicidology" became prevalent in the 1960s.
It was first used in 1929 by W. A. Bonger. Suicidology is the scientific study of its different aspects. Suicide in Iran is believed to be a growing concern over recent years. According to World Health Organization in 2014 the suicide rate of Iran was 5,3 in every 100,000 people. In that year, the rate of suicide based on gender was 7 for men. Seasonally, most suicides occurred in summer with the rate of 35,2% of all suicides. Based on a meta-analytical research, in Iran, the rate of attempted and successful suicides among married couples is higher than other groups; the statistics provided by the Medical Jurisprudence Organization of Iran show that 54% of suicides ending in death occurred among people under 30 years of age and that people who lived in the cities, had statistically higher rates of suicides than people living in rural areas. According to the field research questionnaires given to the suicidal patients referred to Loghman Hospital from 1970 to 1972, family-related issues, with a prevalence of 56%, were the most important reasons of committing suicide..
In this study, family-related issues consisted of conflicts between married couples and their parents, improper interpersonal relations between parents and their children or other siblings with each other. Such issues were most frequent among 20 - to 24-year-olds; these two age periods combined were the cause of 56% of total suicides related to family issues. In general, 81% of suicides related to family issues were committed by youths from 10 to 34 years old. In addition, family-related issues, were the most prevalent reason among children from 10 to 14 years old. In the aforementioned study, love-related issues with a prevalence of 28% were the second most frequent reason of suicide and the most frequent age period was from 15 to 24. In this study, housing and educational failure, have been categorized under society-related issues, the third reason of suicide with the highest frequency in patients from the age of 20 to 24 years old. In this study, financial issues were the lowest cause of suicide with 6% of all committed suicides.
In a study done on 260 suicides refereed to the Me
Suicide methods
A suicide method is any means by which a person completes suicide, purposely ending their life. Suicide by cutting might involve exsanguination, septic shock from certain ruptures such as appendicitis, or drowning from a lung contusion. Exsanguination involves reducing the volume and pressure of the blood to below critical levels by inducing massive blood loss, it is the result of damage inflicted on arteries. The carotid, ulnar or femoral arteries may be targeted. Death may occur directly as a result of the desanguination of the body or via hypovolemia, wherein the blood volume in the circulatory system becomes too low and results in the body shutting down; those considering a suicide attempt, or trying out the weapon to ascertain its effectiveness, may first make shallow cuts, referred to as hesitation wounds or tentative wounds in the literature. They are non-lethal, multiple parallel cuts. Wrist cutting is sometimes practiced with the goal of not suicide. In the case of a non-fatal suicide attempt, the person may experience injury of the tendons of the extrinsic flexor muscles, or the ulnar and median nerves which control the muscles of the hand, both of which can result in temporary or permanent reduction in the victim's sensory or motor ability or cause chronic somatic or autonomic pain.
As in any class IV hemorrhage, aggressive resuscitation is required to prevent death of the patient. Suicide by drowning is the act of deliberately submerging oneself in water or other liquid to prevent breathing and deprive the brain of oxygen. Due to the body's natural tendency to come up for air, drowning attempts involve the use of a heavy object to overcome this reflex; as the level of carbon dioxide in the victim's blood rises, the central nervous system sends the respiratory muscles an involuntary signal to contract, the person breathes in water. Death occurs as the level of oxygen becomes too low to sustain the brain cells, it is among the least common methods of suicide accounting for less than 2% of all reported suicides in the United States. Suicide by suffocation is the act of inhibiting one's ability to breathe or limiting oxygen uptake while breathing, causing hypoxia and asphyxia; this may involve an exit confinement in an enclosed space without oxygen. These attempts involve using depressants to make the user pass out due to the oxygen deprivation before the instinctive panic and the urge to escape due to the hypercapnic alarm response.
It is impossible for someone to commit suicide by holding their breath, as the level of oxygen in the blood becomes too low, the brain sends an involuntary reflex, the person breathes in as the respiratory muscles contract. If one is able to overcome this response to the point of becoming unconscious, in this condition, it's no longer possible to control breathing, a normal rhythm is reestablished; because of this, one is more to commit suicide through gas inhalation than attempting to prevent breathing all together. Inert gases such as helium and argon, or toxic gases such as carbon monoxide are used in suicides by suffocation due to their ability to render a person unconscious, may cause death within minutes. Suicide by hypothermia is a slow death. Hypothermia begins with mild symptoms leading to moderate and severe penalties; this may involve shivering, hallucinations, lack of coordination, sensations of warmth finally death. One's organs cease to function. Suicide by electrocution involves using a lethal electric shock to kill oneself.
This causes arrhythmias of the heart, meaning that the heart does not contract in synchrony between the different chambers causing elimination of blood flow. Furthermore, depending on the value of electric current, burns may occur. In his opinion outlawing the electric chair as a method of execution, Justice William M. Connolly of the Nebraska Supreme Court stated that "electrocution inflicts intense pain and agonizing suffering", adding that it is “unnecessarily cruel in its purposeless infliction of physical violence and mutilation of the prisoner’s body.” Jumping from height is the act of jumping from high altitudes, for example, from a window, balcony or roof of a high rise building, dam or bridge. This method, in most cases, results in severe consequences if the attempt fails, such as paralysis, organ damage, bone fractures. In the United States, jumping is among the least common methods of committing suicide. In Hong Kong, jumping is the most common method of committing suicide, accounting for 52.1% of all reported suicide cases in 2006 and similar rates for the years prior to that.
The Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of the University of Hong Kong believes that it may be due to the abundance of accessible high rise buildings in Hong Kong. There have been several documented cases of suicide by skydiving, by people who deliberately failed to open their parachute and were found to have left suicide notes. Expert Skydiver and former 22 SAS Soldier Charles Bruce QGM committed suicide following eight years of mental illness and periods under section by leaping from a Cessna 172 from 5000 feet over Fyfield, Oxfordshire without a parachute whilst on a priva
Suicide attack
A suicide attack is any violent attack in which the attacker accepts their own death as a direct result of the method used to harm, damage or destroy the target. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history as part of a military campaign such as the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II, more as part of terrorist campaigns, such as the September 11 attacks. While there were few, if any, successful suicide attacks anywhere in the world from the end of World War II until 1980, between 1981 and September 2015, a total of 4,814 suicide attacks occurred in over 40 countries, killing over 45,000 people. During this time the global rate of such attacks grew from an average of three a year in the 1980s, to about one a month in the 1990s, to one a week from 2001 to 2003, to one a day from 2003 to 2015. Suicide attacks tend to be more deadly and destructive than other terror attacks because they give their perpetrators the ability to conceal weapons, make last-minute adjustments, because they dispense with the need for remote or delayed detonation, escape plans or rescue teams.
They constituted only 4% of all terrorist attacks around the world over one period, but caused 32% of all terrorism-related deaths. Ninety percent of those attacks occurred in Afghanistan, Israel, the Palestinian territories and Sri Lanka. Overall, as of mid-2015 about three-quarters of all suicide attacks occurred in just three countries: Afghanistan and Iraq. Suicide attacks have been described as a weapon of psychological warfare to instill fear in the target population, a strategy to eliminate or at least drastically diminish areas where the public feels safe, the "fabric of trust that holds societies together", as well as demonstrate the lengths to which perpetrators will go to, to achieve their goals; the motivation of suicide attackers varies. Kamikaze were motivated by obedience and nationalism. Before 2003, most attacks targeted forces occupying the attackers' homeland, according to analyst Robert Pape. Anthropologist Scott Atran states that since 2004 the overwhelming majority of bombers have been motivated by the ideology of Islamist martyrdom.
Suicide attacks include both Suicide terrorism—terrorism defined as any action "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants" for the purpose of intimidation—and suicide attacks not targeting non-combatants. An alternative definition is provided by Jason Burke, a journalist who has lived among Islamic militants, suggests that most define terrorism as'the use or threat of serious violence' to advance some kind of'cause', stressing that terrorism is a tactic. Academic Fred Halliday, has written that assigning the descriptor of'terrorist' or'terrorism' to the actions of a group is a tactic used by states to deny'legitimacy' and'rights to protest and rebel'; the definition of "suicide" is another issue. Suicide terrorism itself has been defined by one source as "violent actions perpetrated by people who are aware that the odds they will return alive are close to zero". Other sources exclude from their work "suicidal" or high risk attacks, such as the Lod Airport massacre or "reckless charge in battle", focusing only on true "suicide attacks", where the odds of survival are not "close to zero" but required to be zero, because "the perpetrator's ensured death is a precondition for the success of his mission".
Excluded from the definition are: "proxy bombings", which may have political goals and may be designed to look like suicide bombing, but where the "proxy" is forced to carry a bomb under threat (such as having his/her Il, not political, social or religious, motives. It may not always be clear to investigators. Suicide attack campaigns sometimes using proxy bombers. Or manipulating the vulnerable to be bombers, At least one researcher argues that the motivation to kill and be killed connects some suicide attackers more to "suicidal rampage" murderers than is thought; the usage of the term "suicide attack" goes back a long way but "suicide bombing" dates back to at least 1940 when a New York Times article mentions the term in relation to German tactics. Less than two years that newspaper referred to a Japanese kamikaze attempt on an American carrier as a "suicide bombing". In 1945 The Times of London, referred to a kamikaze plane as a "suicide-bomb", two years an article there referred to a new British pilot-less, radio-controlled rocket missile as designed "as a counter-measure to the Japanese'suicide-bomber'".
Sometimes, to assign either a more positive or negative connotation to the act, suicide bombing is referred to by different terms. Istishhad Islamist supporters call a suicide attack Istishhad, the suicide attacker shahid; the idea being that the attacker died in order to testify his faith in God, for example while waging jihad bis saif. The term "suicide" is never used; the terms Istishhad / "martyrdom operation" have been embraced by the Palestinian Authority, by Hamas, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and other Palestinian factions. Homicide bombingSome efforts have been made to replace the term "suicide bombing" with "homicide bombing", on the grounds that since the primary purpose of such a bombing is to kill other people, homicide is a more apt adjective than "suicide"; the first to use the term for a wide audience was White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in April 2002. The only major media outlets to use it were Fo
Banzai charge
A banzai charge is the term used by the Allied forces to refer to Japanese human wave attacks mounted by infantry units. This term came from the Japanese cry "Tennōheika Banzai", shortened to banzai referring to a tactic used by Japanese soldiers during the Pacific War; the banzai charge is considered to be one method of gyokusai, a suicide attack, or suicide before being captured by the enemy such as seppuku. The origin of the term is a classical Chinese phrase in the 7th-century Book of Northern Qi, which states "丈夫玉碎恥甎全", "A true man would be the shattered jewel, ashamed to be the intact tile." Among the rules there existed a code of honor, used by Japanese military governments. With the revolutionary change in the Meiji Restoration and frequent wars against China and Russia, the militarist government of Japan adopted the concepts of Bushido to condition the country's population to be ideologically obedient to the emperor. Impressed with how samurai were trained to commit suicide when a great humiliation was about to befall them, the government educated troops that it was a greater humiliation to surrender to the enemy than to die.
The suicide of Saigō Takamori, the leader of old samurai during the Meiji Restoration inspired the nation to idealize and romanticize death in battle and to consider suicide an honorable final action. During the Siege of Port Arthur human wave attacks were conducted on Russian artillery and machine guns by the Japanese which ended up becoming suicidal. Since the Japanese suffered massive casualties in the attacks, one description of the aftermath was that " thick, unbroken mass of corpses covered the cold earth like a coverlet". In the 1930s, the Japanese found, it became accepted military tactics in the Japanese army where numerically weaker Japanese forces using their superior training in bayonets were able to defeat larger Chinese forces. The Japanese here did not face massed automatic weapons but rather the bolt action rifle of the Chinese, which were slow to cycle the action. During the war period, the Japanese militarist government disseminated propaganda that romanticized suicide attacks, using one of the virtues of Bushido as the basis for the campaign.
The Japanese government presented war with death defined as a duty. By the end of 1944, the government announced the last protocol, unofficially named ichioku gyokusai, implying the will of sacrificing the entire Japanese population of 100 million, if necessary, for the purpose of resisting opposition forces. During the U. S. raid on Makin Island, on August 17, 1942, the U. S. Marine Raiders attacking the island spotted and killed Japanese machine gunners; the Japanese defenders launched a banzai charge with rifles and swords but were stopped by American firepower. The pattern was repeated with similar results. During the Battle of Guadalcanal, on August 21, 1942, Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki led 800 soldiers in a direct attack on the American line guarding Henderson Field in the Battle of the Tenaru. After small-scale combat engagement in the jungle, Ichiki's army mounted a banzai charge on the enemy; the largest banzai charge of the war took place in the Battle of Saipan in 1944 where, at the cost of 4,300 dead Japanese soldiers, it destroyed the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th U.
S. Infantry, who lost 650 men. Banzai charges were always of dubious effectiveness. In the early stages of the Pacific War, a sudden banzai charge might overwhelm small groups of enemy soldiers unprepared for such an attack; however by the end of the war, a banzai charge's participants suffered horrendous losses while inflicting little damage in return if launched against an organized defense with strong firepower, such as automatic weapons, machine guns and semi-automatic rifles. At best, they were conducted by groups of the last surviving soldiers when the main battle was lost, as a last resort or as an alternative to surrender. At worst they threw away valuable resources in men and arms in suicidal attacks which only hastened defeat; some Japanese commanders, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, recognized the futility and waste of such attacks and expressly forbade their men from carrying them out. Indeed, the Americans were surprised that the Japanese did not employ banzai charges at the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Wansui, Banzai Kamikaze – Aerial suicide attacks used by the Japanese in WWII Running amok Suicide by cop Juramentados Human wave attack
Suicide in antiquity
Suicide was a widespread occurrence in antiquity. There were many different reasons for committing suicide; because taking one’s own life is morally confrontational, there are many different viewpoints on suicide. These viewpoints, although some may consider them modern, took root in ancient times; the Oxford English Dictionary places the first occurrence of the word in 1651. However suicide was seen with much disgust, therefore many did not put the word in their dictionaries, let alone vocabulary, they used phrases like “self-murder”, “self-killing”, “self-slaughter” in place of suicide. They felt these phrases more appropriately portrayed how it related to murder; because suicide was believed to be related to murder, many worry about the welfare of the soul for one who has committed suicide. This became a major religious question, there are many different religious views of suicide. Many scientists and doctors considered suicide as a possible illness; the doctors began assuming people committed suicide only.
There were advantages to claiming it as a medical problem. Instead of condemning the person and looking down on their families, sympathy became the response. “The act was decriminalized: the successful suicide could now be buried and his family was no longer disinherited. However, with these advantages came some disadvantages as well. Al Alvarez in his book The Savage God said, “Despite all the talk of prevention, it may be that the suicide is as rejected by the social scientist as utterly as he was by the most dogmatic Christian”; this referred to the fact that the more people began to recognize suicide as a mental illness, the more they turned away from the idea of it being a morally wrong action or a religious question. Today the reasons for suicide are many, the ways to achieve it are broad. In earlier eras, some found it to be the only way to redeem them from failure. Elise Garrison said that many ancient suicidal victims, “ determined to regain lost honor and restore equilibrium to society”.
Garrison refers to the works of Émile Durkheim. She says that Durkheim talks about people being in different categories. Determining what category they are in, could decide the reason they would commit suicide. “Durkheim’s categories —egoistic, anomic, fatalistic”. Durkheim explains that egoistic people over reflect on everything, they tend to have high knowledge, don’t integrate into society well. Protestants, for example, may default to an egoistic personality; the altruistic person devalues themselves and treats the opinion of the group highly. Those who lead a strict life-style or are a religion, strict on obedience. Self-sacrifice is considered part of altruistic suicide. Anomic suicide can result from someone who does not limit their desires, they satisfy every desire, have no regulation. On the other hand, Fatalistic suicide will occur in someone who has high regulation and does not satisfy many of their desires. While these categories apply to suicide today, it is these types of personalities that made people more susceptible to suicide anciently.
In ancient India, two forms of altruistic suicide were practiced. One was Jauhar, a mass suicide by women of a community when their menfolk suffered defeat in battle, the women fearing retribution, rape and worse by the enemy soldiers; because suicide was a controversial issue, it was discussed in all of the philosophical schools of the Greco-Roman world. J. M. Rist says, “From the earliest days of the Stoic school the problem of suicide is…a problem of free will”; each school formed their own opinion on moral meanings of suicide. Many Greeks came to consider suicide a heroic act. A. D. Nock said, “there was a certain fascination about self-chosen death”. One of the many philosophers who developed an opinion on suicide was Socrates, he says of suicide, “a man, one of the god’s possessions, should not kill himself ‘until the god sends some compulsion upon him, as he sends compulsion on us at present’”. Socrates did not agree with suicide, unless as he says, god tells her to do it, he felt that it condemned the person who committed suicide though he did so himself.
The defense of his eventual suicide is detailed in Plato's written account in the Apology. Though he was sentenced to death by the state, Socrates had the chance to refuse and escape, instead of choosing to drink hemlock. Another famous philosopher of the Greco-Roman world with strong views on the subject was Plato. We learn from J. M. Rist that, “in the Phaedo Plato allows a small loophole in his condemnation of the frequent Greek practice of suicide… What ought a man to suffer, asks Plato, if he kills that, most his own… that is, if he takes his own life?” Plato believed that the state and the gods were associated, “Hence crimes against the state are crimes against the gods, vice versa. When a man kills himself without good reason… he is committing a crime”; this allowed for the state the right to punish. However, this did not imply that suicide was unacceptable. If anything, Plato believed. Aristotle believed that suicide was agreeable in some
Suicide in India
In 2016 the number of suicides in India had increased to 230,314. Suicide was the most common cause of death in both the age groups of 15 -- 15 -- 39 years. About 800,000 people die by suicide worldwide every year, of these 135,000 are residents of India, a nation with 17.5% of world population. Between 1987 and 2007, the suicide rate increased from 7.9 to 10.3 per 100,000, with higher suicide rates in southern and eastern states of India. In 2012, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal had the highest proportion of suicides. Among large population states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala had the highest suicide rates per 100,000 people in 2012; the male to female suicide ratio has been about 2:1. Estimates for number of suicides in India vary. For example, a study published in Lancet projected 187,000 suicides in India in 2010, while official data by the Government of India claims 134,600 suicides in the same year. According to WHO data, the age standardized suicide rate in India is 16.4 per 100,000 for women and 25.8 for men.
The Government of India classifies a death as suicide if it meets the following three criteria: it is an unnatural death, the intent to die originated within the person, there is a reason for the person to end his or her life. The reason may have been specified in unspecified. If one of these criterion is not met, the death may be classified as death because of illness, murder or in another statistical; the southern states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu along with eastern states of West Bengal and Mizoram have a suicide rate of greater than 16 while it is less than 4 in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Puducherry reported the highest suicide rate at 36.8 per 100,000 people, followed by Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The lowest suicide rates were reported followed by Nagaland and Manipur. In India, about 46,000 suicides occurred each in 15–29 and 30–44 age groups in 2012 – or about 34% each of all suicides. Poisoning and self-immolation were the primary methods used to die by suicide in 2012.
In 2012, 80% of the suicide victims were literate, higher than the national average literacy rate of 74%. There were 19,120 suicides in India's largest 53 cities. In the year 2012, Chennai reported the highest total number of suicides at 2,183, followed by Bengaluru and Mumbai. Jabalpur followed by Kollam reported the highest rate of suicides at 45.1 and 40.5 per 100,000 people about 4 times higher than national average rate. There is a wide variation in suicide rates, year to year, among Indian cities. On average, males suicide rate is twice that of females. However, there is a wide variation in this ratio at the regional level. West Bengal reported 6,277 female suicides, the highest amongst all states of India, a ratio of male to female suicides at 4:3. Domestic violence is a major risk factor for suicide in a case study performed in Bangalore. However, as a fraction of total suicides, violence against women – such as domestic violence, rape and dowry – accounted for less than 4% of total suicides.
Suicides motivated by ideology doubled between 2006 and 2008. The Indian government has been criticized by the media for its mental health care system, linked to the high suicide rate. India's economy vastly depends on agriculture with around 60% of its people directly or indirectly depend upon it. Different reasons like droughts, low yield prices, exploitation by middlemen and inability to pay loans lead Indian farmers to die by suicide. In India, suicide was illegal and the survivor would face jail term of up to one year and fine under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. However, the government of India decided to repeal the law in 2014. In April 2017, the Indian parliament decriminalised suicide by passing the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 and the act commenced in July 2018. A four pronged attack to combat suicide suggested in a 2003 monograph was Reducing social isolation, Preventing social disintegration, Treating mental disorders, Regulating the sale of pesticides & ropes. Additionally, a set of state led policies are being enforced to decrease the high suicide rate among farmers of Karnataka Farmers' suicides in India Dionne Bunsha Palagummi Sainath Indian states ranked by suicide Singh A.
R. Singh S. A. Towards a suicide free society: identify suicide prevention as public health policy, Mens Sana Monographs, II:2, p3-16. Vijaykumar L. Suicide and its prevention: The urgent need in India, Indian J Psychiatry.
Suicide by cop
Suicide by cop or suicide by police is a suicide method in which a suicidal individual deliberately behaves in a threatening manner, with intent to provoke a lethal response from a public safety or law enforcement officer. There are two broad categories of "suicide by cop"; the first is when someone has committed a crime and is being pursued by the police and decides that they would rather die than be arrested. These people may not otherwise be suicidal but may decide that life is not worth living if they are incarcerated and thus will provoke police to kill them; the second version involves people who are contemplating suicide and who decide that provoking law enforcement into killing them is the best way to act on their desires. These individuals may commit a crime with the specific intention of provoking a law enforcement response; the idea of committing suicide in this manner is based on trained procedures of law enforcement officers the policy on the use of deadly force. In jurisdictions where officials are capable of deadly force, there are set circumstances where they will predictably use deadly force against a threat to themselves or others.
This form of suicide functions by exploiting this trained reaction. The most common scenario is pointing a firearm at a police officer or an innocent person, which would be expected to provoke an officer to fire on them. However, many variants exist; this concept hinges on the person's state of mind, their desire to end their own life, which can be difficult to determine post mortem. Some cases are obvious, such as pointing an unloaded or non-functioning gun at officers, or the presence of a suicide note; some suspects brazenly announce their intention to die. However, many cases can be more difficult to determine, as some suspects with the desire to die will fire live ammunition and kill people before being killed themselves. Many law enforcement training programs have added sections to address handling these situations if officers suspect that the subject is attempting to goad them into using lethal force. Many modern cases that pre-date the formal recognition of the phenomenon have been identified or speculated by historians as matching the pattern now known as suicide by cop.
According to authors Mark Lindsay and David Lester, Houston McCoy, one of the two Austin Police Department officers who shot and killed Charles Whitman, the "Texas Tower Sniper", believed that Whitman could have shot him and fellow officer Ramiro Martinez, but "he was waiting for them, wanted to be shot." The 1976 death of Mal Evans, road manager, a friend of The Beatles, who aimed an air gun at police and refused to put it down, was theorized as a possible example of this phenomenon. Some historians believe that Giuseppe Zangara, the man who killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak in a possible attempt to assassinate President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, might have been attempting suicide by police; the phenomenon has been described in news accounts from 1981, scientific journals since 1985. The phrase has appeared in news headlines since at least 1987, it did not become common until the early 2000s. The phrase seems to have originated in the United States, but has appeared in the UK, where a jury first determined someone committed suicide by cop in 2003.
Some of the first research into suicide by cop was completed by Sgt. Rick Parent of the Delta Police Department. Parent's research of 843 police shootings determined that about 50% were victim precipitated homicide. Police defined victim precipitated homicide as "an incident in which an individual bent on self-destruction, engages in life threatening and criminal behavior to force law enforcement officers to kill them."The first formally labeled "Suicide by Cop" case in English legal history was a judgment made by the Reverend Dr. William Dolman while serving as a London coroner between 1993 and 2007, it set a legal precedent and the judgment, as a cause of death, has been a part of English law since. Profile of Suicide by Cop Subjects: American Association of Suicidology 95% were male, 5% female Mean age: 35 for men, 40 for women 41% men were Caucasian, 26% Hispanic and 16% African American 50% women were Caucasian, 25% Hispanic 37% of men, 42% of women were single 29% of men, 50% of women had children 54% of men were unemployed 29% of men did not have housing 62% of men, 100% of women had confirmed or probable mental health history 80% of men were armed – of these 60% possessed a firearm, 26% possessed knives 100% of women were armed – 50% had a firearm, 50% had a knife 19% feigned or simulated weapon possession 87% of individuals made suicidal communications prior to and/or during the incident 36% were under the influence of alcohol The Aramoana massacre, a spree shooting that occurred on 13 November 1990 in New Zealand.
Police shot the suspect dead as he came out of a house firing from the hip and screaming "Kill me!" In June 2015, 21-year-old Trepierre Hummons posted his intent to commit suicide by cop on Facebook. He reported he'd seen a man acting erratically with a gun, he shot and killed the responding officer. The next officer to arrive on the scene killed Hummons. In December 2008, 15-year-old Tyler Cassidy was shot and killed by three Victoria Police officers after he threatened them with two large knives and ordered them to shoot him. Myron May, a 31-year-old man believing he wa
