Azerbaijan: who and what make people commit suicide?

62-year-old Nizami Safarov, chief librarian of the Agrarian University of Azerbaijan, who was reported missed since February 4, committed suicide by hanging himself. Ganja’s Police officials said they’d received a call from anonymous person.

The issue of suicides in Azerbaijan has been repeatedly called as one of the most topical. Human rights activist Novella Jafaroglu said in an interview with Azadliq paper that the state forces must investigate these cases and propose measures to prevent these developments. “Ministry of Health and Social Care must take into account to all these. It’s necessary to design a framework of programs and implement a range of projects.”

Irada Javadova, in her turn, said that Azerbaijan’s government is completely responsible for all these cases of self-killings. “The government must pay attention to this issue. Suicides in Azerbaijan are caused not only by financial problems. Many people committed suicide as they were made to, and as they couldn’t live in existing injustice and corruption.”

Psychologist Deyanat Rzayev said that authorities, in order to avoid panic, don’t announce that 80-90 percent out of those who committed suicide were mentally sane people. “The main question is who makes people commit suicide? If all these self-killed people were not healthy, why they were not on the books at hospitals?”

According to Deyanat Rzayev, before, men mostly committed suicide in Azerbaijan, while currently the number of self-killed women increased, mostly because of violence and pressure, and generally in regions of Azerbaijan. Deyanat Rzayev also pointed that number of suicides among Azerbaijan’s teenagers and young adults also increased.