Gun controls urged for suicide-risk farmers
01 October 1998
Gun controls urged for suicide-risk farmers
By FWi staff
DEPRESSED farmers should not be allowed easy access to their guns, recommends a report published today (Thursday).
The study of suicides among men and women farmers was carried out for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It found that nearly half had shot themselves.
The study found a further 30% of farmer-suicides hanged themselves, 16% used carbon monoxide and 8% used poison.
The reports author. Keith Hawton, a professor at Oxford Universitys Department of Psychiatry, said farmers had a higher risk of suicide than the general population.
He said easy access to guns and other lethal materials, such as chemicals, could partly account for the high rate of suicide among farmers.
“Restrictions of access to firearms and to agricultural chemicals, especially in farmers known to be depressed or at risk in other ways, could prevent some suicides,” Professor Hawton said.