Now this is a rather sad if interesting result. Well, not so surprising if one thinks deeply about this. There is an increase in tensions in the middle east, globalisation is happening, media intrusion is happening, religiosity is increasing. So changes in suicide rate, in hindsight, should happen as well. But this paper does a review of the PubMed database and extracts a shed load of papers relating to this phenomena.
The author finds clear evidence that the rate of suicide or even attempted suicide has shot up. What are the reasons? Well, the reasons that the researcher proposes are psychiatric disorders, marriage and the role of the man / patriarchal perspectives. The author closes by saying, and I quote:
Higher suicide rates among young Middle Eastern Muslim females must be considered an important issue, and their root causes should be dealt with properly and without delay.
Out of the three main root causes that the researcher identified, the first one seems to be easiest to address. Psychiatric disorders: improve health care systems, train more doctors and psychiatric analysts, provide help and assistance, teach the family to be more receptive of these disorders and understand the problems, help and support the women. But this is not easy. As long as women in the Middle East are (and I am exaggerating here), meant not even to be seen forget about being heard, the second and third factors are not going to be fixed that easily.
The author talks about Muslim women only and given the patriarchal perspectives in Muslim worlds (there is a current blow up in India about this), how on earth are you going to remove it? This has religious sanction and we all know how tough it is to apply equal rights to woman in the face of religious facts (here is a list of jaundiced points which purport to shed light on how women are seen).
Very long way to go on this fight, and in the meantime, more suicides will keep on happening.
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