Suicide study - 190 deaths is too many

The findings of the latest National Suicide Research Foundation study highlight the complexity of the tragedy that is suicide.

While one-third of those who took their own lives in Cork City and county had worked in construction and a simplistic analysis would suggest that unemployment contributed to their pressures, the next biggest group worked in agriculture, a sector that is performing well.

While problem drinking was a feature of the lives of two-thirds of those who died, more than half had also experienced serious relationship problems in the year before they died, so cause and effect are hard to distinguish.