Death faces us all. Preoccupation with it however is commonly regarded as morbid. As a way of dying, suicide is seen as being abnormal. This is certainly so in a statistical sense. In 1993, there were 31,896 deaths in the Republic of Ireland of which officially 357 were suicides. This means that approximately one in a hundred deaths today are self-inflicted. The proportion of suicide deaths to other deaths varies across age groups, however. Generally speaking among the young, suicide is a more common cause of death because other types of death are less common. In the past the official Irish suicide figures may have under-estimated the true picture. Recent research however has shown that the official Irish suicide statistics are likely not to underestimate the true rate and are also more likely to be reliable than are the equivalent statistics from England and Wales.

The word ‘abnormal’, however, in medicine is also used in a nonstatistical sense to imply deviation from the ideal or desirable. If we say someone is abnormal, we imply that he is either mentally ill or suffering from a defect or blemish of personality. Most people assume that those who intentionally end their lives are abnormal in this latter medical sense, immediately prior to death. The opposite holds in murder. Society assumes the perpetrator is not mentally ill unless evidence is brought forward to the contrary. Not all believe this, however, and some actively canvass the viewpoint that suicide, in certain circumstances, is to be encouraged.