When it comes to explaining the recent rise in suicide, two questions need to be answered. Why do people kill themselves? And why are more people doing so in recent years?
Neither can be answered with generalisations, says Dr John F. Connolly of the Irish Association of Suicidology. "You can't really talk about causes with suicide. You can only talk about associated factors."
These include increasing age, marital breakdown or separation, a family history of suicide, easy access to means of carrying out suicide, history of psychiatric illness, prevalence of suicidal ideation, physical disability, cognitive impairment, loss of religious faith, dissatisfaction with medical treatment, the occurrence of a significant loss in life, and bereavement.
"It's not like dealing with heart disease, where you can trace a death, say, to a blocked artery," says Dr Connolly. "The reasons for suicide are very complex."
A recently published report on suicide in Ireland by the voluntary group Aware suggested it could be best explained as a "domino effect" of three components: depression and related disorders, traumatic losses in life and, finally, the added depressing effect of alcohol or illicit drug use.
"While depression would appear to be the most commonly experienced first sequence in the domino chain, followed by the further demoralising effect of emotional trauma leading in turn to alcohol abuse, in young people the sequence of events may start with illicit drug use," Aware said.
The report noted that "as the chain of causal factors unfold, the person's thinking becomes restricted and their ability to visualise solutions to their problems diminish. It is at this end stage that suicide is seen as a meaningful alternative."
The link between suicide and psychiatric disorders has been well established by both domestic and international studies.
In numerous surveys, more than 90 per cent of suicide victims were found to be mentally ill, with a slightly higher rate of positive diagnosis among women compared to men. Between 40 and 70 per cent of victims were found to have had a mood disorder; between 5 and 20 per cent suffered from schizophrenia.
Alcohol abuse is figuring more prominently in research as a causative factor, with one recent Finnish survey citing it as more prevalent in suicide victims than depression. Such findings lend weight to the theory that Ireland's rising suicide rates are partly linked to the increase in alcohol abuse and, in particular, the trend towards "binge drinking" among young people.
Other social changes, such as increased divorce and separation rates, and the decline in religious faith are cited as factors in the rise.
"One of the downsides in an advanced market economy like ours is that people become much more disconnected from one another," says a psychologist, Ms Maureen Gaffney. "People have much less time for their neighbours and family, less time for volunteering. That rise in disconnectedness coincides almost exactly with the epidemic rise in clinical depression and male suicide rates. It is not an accidental or spurious connection."
Addressing the question of why it is men more than women who turn to suicide, she says: "Men don't have the same range of supports, the same range of confidants. There is an attitude that if I have a problem I should be able to handle it myself."
She adds: "Despite everything we say, gender stereotypes are still very strong among young people. Young women are still looking at young men, thinking they should be tough and well able to handle themselves. My observations of adolescents is that because they have not yet formed their own identities, they cling to stereotypes. With maturity that changes."
Mr Mike Watts, national coordinator of the community mental health movement Grow, concurs with this view. "Young people are much more wary of looking for help. The older you get the more you realise life is full of problems but when you're young it's very scary."
The reluctance of men, and particularly young men, to seek medical treatment is borne out by a number of studies. A survey of 100 suicide victims in Cork, published last year by the National Suicide Research Foundation, found that less than half of all male victims had been medically treated in the year before death (15 per cent in the month before) compared to 80 per cent of women (39 per cent in the month before). Among men aged under 29 the situation was even more stark, with only 7 per cent receiving medical treatment in the month before death.
Trying to find a definitive answer to the question "why?" can be not just a difficult task but a counter-productive one, as counsellor and therapist Ms Jean Casey explains. Her husband killed himself in 1977 while she was pregnant with their fourth child and, she says, the act "for me, was totally beyond understanding."
"The `why' is the thing which goes on and on," she says. "What was going on in the person's head at the decisive moment? What was so wrong that they could not talk about it?"
As victims of bereavement, she says, and perhaps - to an extent this applies to society too - "we have to learn to live with unanswered questions."