The numbers of suicides in Latvia are very high compared to the European countries, but similar to the numbers in other post-Soviet countries. From 2.4 million people living in Latvia, about 700 people commit suicide every year, averaging about two people a day.
"But for each committed suicide, there are two to three people trying to commit suicide," said Solita Udrasa director of Mental Health Care Center of Latvia.
About 150,000 people, or 5 percent of Latvia's population suffer from some form of depression. Only 20 percent of the people who commit suicide had heavy mental diseases. As explains Udrasa, the most frequent reason for suicide is depression.
"The reason for suicide is people's inability to cope with emotional pain," said Natalija Bahmacova, psychologist from the crisis center Skalbes.
"It could be depression or depressive reaction, I have never met anybody who would like to die from happiness. It is a reaction of loss. When you are in love all the world seems to be brighter, but depression is the complete contrary situation - everything is gray, gloomy, negative, with the inability to concentrate, and if we don't help here, then it gets worse," said Udrasa.
At the beginning of the 90s people in Latvia were experiencing an awakening and a kind of uplift - euphoria. Only after a while they experienced what this life is like. It was unemployment, consideration of the cruel market economy, cut throat competition in the job market and losing a lot of guaranteed values.
"Earlier it didn't matter how I worked, good or bad, I had a guaranteed salary big or small, but guaranteed. The education was guaranteed, but then suddenly we had to fight for it and not everybody could cope with that," said Udrasa.
From all people who have committed suicide, more than a half are males age 18 to 59, but the number of the same age women has increased in the last year as well. "Birth rates are already very low in Latvia, and this makes it even worse," said Solita Udrasa.
If, in Western countries more suicides are committed in the big cities, then in Latvia it is the other way around.
Udrasa said that the worst situation is in the Latgale region. "First of all people have lost their ties with the social life, which we could call the "kolhoz ties." People live far away from each other. Small schools, community centers and social activities don't exist anymore. Alcohol is the easiest thing to get, and for a short time it is the cure, but then it turns into an even bigger mess."
The highest number of suicides, around 900 a year, were in 1994. At that time in Lithuania and Estonia the numbers were even larger "The situation in Latvia has now stabilized and if there were not so many drug, traffic and violent deaths, we could say that the situation is improving," reckons Udrasa.
Just as sex "didn't exist" before the 90s, there were no depressions either. "What kind of mental derangement could happy Soviet people have? They were always ready for work, tiredness didn't exist." It was just the propaganda people were told, but, of course, depression existed and there was even a period where depression was a reason for becoming disabled.
Society still doesn't understand that depression is an illness, and it is not just a weakness.
"In the mid-1980s consulting rooms with the health centers were opened, but then closed because we thought that we could live without them," remembers Udrasa.
Up to mid-1990s, Latvia had few psychotherapists or psychologists, but now the situation is more stable. Health centers have consulting rooms, there are NGOs such as Crisis Center Skalbes and several hot-lines.
Bahmacova said that there are 10 to 15 incoming phone calls a day, from people, mostly women, who have a problem.
"Most of the time these are social problems, such as suffering from defeat, family and relationship problems," says Bahmacova.
To promote an understanding attitude towards depression as an illness, the Mental Health Care Center in cooperation with other organizations is working to inform specialists and other people, who could face this kind of problem.
The World Health Protection Organization predicts that unipolar (heavy) depression will be the second most frequent cause of premature death and becoming disabled in 2020.
"From one point of view everything is great - science development, information accessibility, distance is nothing any more, but all that creates anxiety and stress. People don't have the time to stop and think, the rhythm of life is very fast, and all these things, of course, have irreversible consequences," said Udrasa.
Mental Health Care Center: 27 Raina bulv. Riga hot-line :7221036 available from 7 p.m. through 10 p.m. on work days
Crisis Center Skalbes: 34 Kungu street, Riga 24 hour hot-line: 7222922
Save the children hot-line: 7222563, available from 4 p.m. through 10 p.m.
Lutheran Church hot-line: 2460106, available from 7 p.m. through 7 a.m.
Telesos hot-line: 2561268 available 24 hours answering machine
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