title: Female suicide rates in Ghizer, Pakistan.
abstract: Suicide is an understudied subject in Pakistan. There are many social, legal, and religious sanctions against it. National rates of suicides are not known. We calculated suicide rates of women in the Ghizer District of the remote Northern Areas of Pakistan. During years 2000 to 2004, 49 women committed suicide. Taking average mean population for women for 5 years as 65,783, we calculated annual crude suicide rates for women as 14.89/100,000/year. For women over the age of 15 years, rates were 33.22/100,000/year; age-specific rates for 15-24 years were 61.07/100,000 per year. These figures are considerably higher than suicide rates in other parts of Pakistan and may be related to high psychiatric morbidity in Pakistani women. This study underscores the need for a standardized system of registration of suicides in Pakistan. There is also urgent need to address high psychological distress in women in Pakistan.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. murad.khan@aku.edu
authors.forename: Murad M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.forename: Aziz
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ahmed
authors.forename: Sultan R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Khan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003906:Developing Countries; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007514:Islam; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000401:mortality; D008875:Middle Aged; D010154:Pakistan; D011203:Poverty / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012424:Rural Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012737:Sex Factors; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult; D000092864:Suicide Prevention