Drowning
Suicide by drowning is the act of deliberately submerging oneself in water or other liquid to prevent breathing and deprive the brain of oxygen. Due to the body's natural tendency to come up for air, drowning attempts often involve the use of a heavy object to overcome this reflex. As the level of carbon dioxide in the victim's blood rises, the central nervous system sends the respiratory muscles an involuntary signal to contract, and the person breathes in water. Death usually occurs as the level of oxygen becomes too low to sustain the brain cells. It is among the least common methods of suicide, typically accounting for less than 2% of all reported suicides in the United States.
Read more about this topic: Tentative Wound
Famous quotes containing the word drowning:
“I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.
However I have heard that sometimes you have to deal
Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.
Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish beneath.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him. They wish to be saved from the mischief of their vices, but not from their vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)