Spain Saw Highest Suicide Numbers Ever Recorded in Year of Covid Lockdown

 In 2020, the first year of the Wuhan virus pandemic, Spain recorded nearly 4,000 people taking their own lives — the highest number recorded since records began in 1906.

Cases of suicide increased by 7.4 per cent overall in 2020 compared to the prior year, for a total of 3,941 people taking their own lives — an average of eleven people per day and the leading cause of unnatural death.

Among children under the age of 15, the rate of suicide doubled in 2020. Elderly people over 80 also saw a 20 per cent increase in suicide for a total of 548 cases, Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports.

Broken down by sex, 2,930 men and 1,011 women took their own lives in 2020 — the first year in history Spain has seen more than a thousand women commit suicide.

Clinical psychologist Miguel Guerrero spoke to the newspaper about the effect the coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns and economic damage have had on people in Spain, saying that “the pandemic has affected the risk factors we already knew about and has threatened protective factors, such as social cohesion.”

Guerrero added that the government should approve prevention policies immediately, saying: “Covid is a storm that we have all gone through, but some on a yacht and others in a rowboat. The pandemic has not been democratic, it has affected the most vulnerable the most.”
Clinical psychologist Luis Fernando López called the data serious, particularly the increase in suicides among children.

He further said that the data “indicates that it is not true that the kids have handled the pandemic well. It is said but it is a lie. We see a lot of self-harm, emotional disorders, eating disorders, addictions, and suicidal ideation, thoughts about death are more common than they were before. I see it in consultation.”

Earlier this year, a British study claimed that nearly five times as many children died during the pandemic from suicide than were actually killed by the coronavirus.

Data by the Royal College of Psychiatrists released last year also claimed that the number of people with suicidal thoughts had tripled during coronavirus lockdowns.