Irish suicides on the increase

The Irish Republic's suicide rate is the fastest-rising in Europe, according to a report published yesterday. But Ireland is still near the bottom of Europe's suicide "league table", according to the Irish Medical Journal, which gave depression and alcoholism as the chief reasons for Irish people killing themselves.

The journal's report, Psychiatric and Social Background to Suicide, said the people most at risk from taking their own lives in Ireland were those under the age of 30.The survey indicated that until the early 1980s, 90 per cent of Irish suicides were attributed to mental illness, but since that time crime, drugs problems and changes in family structures had led to a range of new causes.