USA Today
Originally published May 4, 2012
Tom Miller jumped from the eighth floor of a hotel in the Philippines in February, and Gerhard Habel hanged himself in his apartment in Thailand last April.
These incidents aren't entirely unrelated. Suicide by an American in a foreign country is a more common occurrence than might be thought. It's the fourth-leading cause of death abroad from non-natural causes after road accidents, homicides and drowning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The deaths of Miller and Habel stand out, though, because they were reported to the media by local police, and some information about the tragedies was made public.
Though more than 125 American suicides abroad are reported annually to the State Department, there is no public profile of most who commit the tragic act. For privacy reasons, the State Department will not provide victim information such as name, age, gender or addresses abroad.
"The travel medicine community could take preventative steps if there was more knowledge about risk factors and circumstances of those individuals who are committing suicide abroad," says Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
