Suicide by hanging
[1] It is one of the most commonly used suicide methods and has a high mortality rate; Gunnell et al. gives a figure of at least 70 percent.
[11] Suspension hanging usually results in cerebral hypoxia and decreased muscle tone around the neck.
[16] One study of people who experienced near-hanging who were treated appropriately at a hospital found that 77 percent of them survived.
[14] According to Anton J. L. van Hooff, hanging was the most common suicide method in primitive and pre-industrial societies.
[23] Differences exist among ethnic groups; research suggests that hanging is the most common method among Chinese and Japanese Americans.
[27][28] Hanging, with its connection to justice and injustice, is what the Department of Health and Aged Care of Australia calls a "particularly confronting display of resistance, defiance, individual control and accusatory blame"; it is "a rebuke and statement of uncaring relations, unmet needs, personal anguish, and emotional payback".
[29] A 2010 study by the British Journal of Psychiatry that investigated the motivations of people who had made a near-fatal suicide attempt found that those who had attempted a hanging considered it a painless, quick, simple, and clean method, while those who had opted for a different method held an opposing view.
[32] Lee & Kleinman write that hanging, the most common method in traditional China, was the "final, but unequivocal, way of standing still against and above oppressive authorities, often with the suicide ceremonially dressed prior to the ultimate act".
[34] Virgil's Aeneid, for example, refers to the noose as nodum informis leti ("the coil of unbecoming death").
[35] Timothy Hill writes that there is no conclusive explanation of why the stigma existed; it has been suggested that hanging was a method of the poor.
