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Perspectives on suicide in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

N. K. Ndosi
N. K. Ndosi*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, MUCHS PO Box 65051, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, email nkndosi@hotmail.com
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Suicide is a serious worldwide health problem, particularly among youths. It is defined as the intentional act of killing oneself. Analytically, the suicidal act entails: the wish to kill, the wish to be killed and the wish to die. People who die by suicide know what they are doing and are aware of the consequences of their actions. A completed suicidal act is a complex phenomenon associated with psychological, biological and social factors. It follows severe exhaustion under a continuing assault of stressors when the suicidal individual is no longer able to cope with and to restore homeostasis. In order to categorise a case as a suicide, legal authorities demand unequivocal evidence of intent.

Type
Thematic papers - Suicide
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 7 - 8
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2006

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