Part I: For my final project, I will focus on how women have a higher rate of depression in China, largely due to societal pressures, that in turn leads to a higher rate of suicide. In China, women have a higher rate of suicide compared to men, something very unusual as men usually have a higher rate in other countries such as the United States. This being said, China accounts for about 44% of the worlds total suicides and 56% of womens suicide (Law & Pozi 2008). About 38.3 out of 100 rural chinease women commit suicide every year, compared to 27.5 out of 100 rural men (Lee 2014). In this country, there is a significant difference between rural suicide rates (rural is higher) and urban suicide rates, however, women still have the higher rate within both populations.This higher rate of suicide amoung these women is partially due to the higher rate of depression that comes with being a woman in rural China. 

Within the stigma of gender roles that I have discussed in previous papers, women are expected to do so much for the family, including taking care of the family, doing household duties, and work a full time job, and with all of these duties comes untreated mental illnesses such as depression (Weiyuan 2009). In a traditional chinese family, the woman is usually the one who keeps the household organized, and is responsible for taking care of her husband and any children that they have. As you might imagine, having the pressure of taking care of your career, yourself, your husband, and your family could become overwhelming at times, and with the constraint of time many women do not have the luxury to unwind with friends or family, and thus become immersed in their non-stop revolving life, leading them, in a lot of cases, to become depressed or otherwise mentally ill. To build onto the fact that many chinese women in this circumstance wouldn’t have time for themselves, they also would not have time to reach out to a mental health professional to work through their problems, which leads to further complications such as suicide, not to mention the fact that merely going to a mental health professional or therapist could be seen by many in her community as abandoning her family for a short time, which would garner backlash to the one seeking help (Weiyuan 2009).

In addition to the struggles chinese women face when combating the difficult aspects of their lives, another cause of the high female suicide rate could stem from the very accessible methods of suicide. According to a study conducted by Cambridge University, some 62% of suicides resulted from the ingestion of pesticides or rat poison (Yip et al 2018). In the grand scheme of things, this is not that surprising, seeing as about 60% of chinese citizens live in rural areas, where laws are not as easily enforced, and pesticides and rat poison are commonly used on farms and are easily accessed by whomever needs it. Overall, the lack of access to treatment, the growing pressure that chinese society places on their women, and the ease of access to substances that are deadly are causing an increase in the suicide rates among chinese women.

Part II: The suicide epidemic that is currently happening in China is important to address for two reasons. One reason is due to a cultural standpoint. Like I said earlier, in a traditional Chinese family home, the woman is expected to do everything within the home while also carrying a full time job. This puts a lot of pressure on these women and that is essentially what drives these women to sucide. This being said, this lack of focus on a women’s mental health needs is affecting social lives within the culture, as these people do not focus on this high rate of suicide much and this leads to this rate increasing (more or less: not declining). If this epidemic is not addressed soon within this culture, women are going to keep committing suicide, and more familys are going to become abrupt and confused. The second reason this issue is important to address is within a public health aspect. In China, the population of women compared to men is already drastically lower, so if these women keep committing suicide, this difference in population is going to increase. Another factor to consider is how much this costs people in China? Emotionally and physically? If this suicide rate in China continues to grow, more and more families would be unable to afford the costs that come with funerals and such, as most of the suicides happen in poorer, rural areas. If these women had better access to health care for mental health and this stigma that women need to solely take care of their familys was gone, these suicide rates would go down sigfificantly.

Works Cited:

Law, Samuel, and Pozi Liu. “Suicide in China: Unique Demographic Patterns and Relationship to Depressive Disorder.” SpringerLink, Current Science Inc., 1 Feb. 2008, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11920-008-0014-5#citeas.

Lee, Hyeon Jung. “Fearless Love, Death for Dignity: Female Suicide and Gendered Subjectivity in Rural North China.” The China Journal, no. 71, 2014, pp. 25–42. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/674552.

Weiyuan. “Women and Suicide in Rural China.” PubMed Central (PMC), 2009, europepmc.org/articles/pmc2789367.

Yip, Paul S. F., and Ka Y. Liu. “The Ecological Fallacy and the Gender Ratio of Suicide in China.” CambridgeCore, British Journal of Psychiatry , 2 Jan. 2018, doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.106.021816.