Suicide Suicide is a tragic and often mysterious event. The causes of suicide are multi-dimensional and complex, shaped by many aspects of life including biological, sociological and psychological factors. Biological factors such as an undiagnosed mental illness are associated with a high percentage of suicides. It is ascertained that the brain is a physical organ of the body, and it can become ill in a variety of ways just like any other organ of the body. The most common mental illnesses which may result in suicide if left untreated are depression and schizophrenia. Sociological factors and change in Ireland in recent decades has impacted on the nature and extent of suicidal behaviour. Factors such as changing family structure, marital breakdown, changing cultural values and religious practices, unemployment/employment, alcohol and substance misuse and increased availability of methods of suicide in combination can cause an adverse effect on an individual that can lead to suicidal behaviour. Psychological factors such as unbearable psychological pain in which the person feels especially hopeless and helpless, tunnel vision where the person sees suicide as the one and only solution for their current difficulties, ambivalence where the person struggles between wanting to live and wanting to die, a sense of vulnerability where the person lacks a positive view of themselves, feelings of aloneness and feeling cut off from others, an experience of loss or concern about future anticipated loss and finally where suicide is seen as an escape from what feels a hopeless and unbearable life. Although, to look for one particular cause and state that it was the reason for a person’s death can be simplistic and wrong in the vast majority of cases. Researchers believe that 90 per cent of people who die by suicide have diminished responsibility. People who have attempted suicide sometimes say that the shutters of their minds closed down and they were ‘in total darkness’, or they say that they lost contact with reality before they attempted to kill themselves. It is believed that when people die by suicide, it is not usually because they wanted to die, but because they have private problems they believe will never end. People who die by suicide can be experiencing unbearable emotional and mental pain at the time of death and cannot see any other way out. In the last hours, everything is seen through tunnel vision. They can feel helpless and hopeless. They may be unable to consider that negative moods can pass away. They can only remember that these moods keep coming back. They may be incapable of thinking of alternatives or exploring other options or of how families and friends will feel in the aftermath if they take their own lives.