Suicide attempts and suicides among youth in Oran

This work is the result of four years of reflection and investigation into suicide and suicide attempts in Oran, undertaken by our research group within the CRASC. For a decade, the phenomenon of suicide and suicide attempts has been more apparent in Algeria. Is this because it is truly experiencing a substantial increase, or is it simply because the media—which have expanded significantly since the early 1990s in Algeria (particularly private sector media)—discuss it more freely? Based on this observation, we attempted to define the phenomenon, beginning with the collection of statistical data to assess its scale, and subsequently to understand its determinants and meanings. This proved to be extremely arduous, as certain research subjects are far from accessible. The first project (2002–2004) was an exploratory project that allowed us to understand the difficulty of such an undertaking. The problems encountered were numerous, but the most thorny was that of statistics; we will see further on the meanings of such difficulties. However, the latter were of such a nature that, while still addressing the question of suicide, we primarily focused our study on suicide attempts in Oran during the second project, which began in 2005 and concluded at the end of 2007. This project allowed us to deepen our examination of the issue on a socio-anthropological, psychological, and care-management level, culminating in the development of a proposal for a crisis support center for suicide attempters.