THE college freshman was reading a cell phone message when, in anguish, anger, frustration or desperation, he suddenly threw down the phone. He climbed onto a fifth-floor balcony on his campus in Pudong, and jumped.

The reason the Spanish-language major, surnamed Sun, killed himself in March has never been disclosed. Witnesses said he was reading the message in a corridor before class and then plunged from the No. 1 Building at the Shanghai Industry and Commerce Foreign Language College on March 18.

According to World Health Organization, 22.23 out of 100,000 people in China commit suicide every year. The sudden end of a promising life from suicide is always disturbing and gives rise to a feeling that something is wrong with modern society.

With more media reports on youngsters committing suicide, some say pressure to succeed - professionally and in marriage - has become too much for sheltered young people raised in one-child households and they are particularly ill-suited to cope.

But that's far from the whole story on suicide in China, which is not always what meets the eye, and is surprising in several ways.

China's suicide rates actually have dropped almost by half over 20 years, according to Dr Michael Phillips, a prominent psychiatrist who directs the Suicide Research and Prevention Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Medicine. He is also professor of psychiatry and public health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the US. He won the State Council's International Science and Technology Cooperation Award in January.

Truths about suicide

Phillips sees a "huge drop," saying the number of suicides annually is more than 100 fewer than 20 years ago.

Phillips, 63, has been studying suicide in China since 1985. He has led studies that helped uncover truths about suicide in the developing world that were initially rejected by many Western experts.

In an interview with Shanghai Daily, Phillips says he believes the drop in China's suicide rate is linked to economic reforms, urbanization and greater openness about suicide.

When suicides are reported in the news, there's a tendency to reach for "a simple answer to a very complicated problem," Phillips says. "Almost everybody experiences the breakup with a girlfriend or boyfriend and they don't (commit) suicide ... That might be the straw that broke the camel's back, but all suicides occur in the context of a complicated web of factors; they are not due to a single factor or stressor."

It's important to look at the bigger picture. "Yes, before, the rural family was a strong unit, but it also limited people a hell of a lot."

"The divorce rate has gone up a lot in recent decades. But 20 years ago, women in abusive marriages in which they were frequently beaten by alcoholic husbands had no way out at all. It was just not socially acceptable" to get a divorce.

Now there's an alternative that is not as drastic as suicide. "Kids were also restrained dramatically in terms of what they could do. Horizons were limited, particularly with the hu kou, the restrictive urban household registration that China is starting to relax."

While graduates struggling to find jobs are a serious problem, it's not as bad as it seems, Phillips says."Twenty years ago, only about 2 percent could get into university and anybody else ... took the exam year after year and failed. They ended up seeing their lives as failures," he says.

Phillips says his "gut sense" is that if there were an overall stress meter for all community members in each country, China's stress scores would be down over two decades.

"People in China still think that things are going to be better for their kids than for themselves. That's not true in America now," he says.

While it's not possible to prove any direct, scientific link between lower suicide rates and a community's hopefulness, "there's a whole range of issues in which the level of hope in the community has an indirect relationship to suicide," he says.

More openness about suicide also has helped, Phillips says. "Twenty years ago, it was a taboo. You couldn't write an article on it. You couldn't research it ... Just the fact of making it a legitimate topic of public discourse actually resulted in decreased rates of suicide."

The common use of very toxic pesticides to commit suicide reveals another very surprising fact about suicides in China.

When Phillips and Chinese scientists did a large study on the mental status of individuals before they attempted suicide or completed the act, their findings were met with disbelief from most Western suicide experts.

In that 1999 study, around 60 percent of those who attempted suicide and survived did not have a mental illness at the time, they found. "For those who completed suicide, we found that 30 percent did not have current mental disorders," Phillips says.

The findings were rejected initially because they didn't mesh with the majority of suicide studies - based on the 16 percent of cases worldwide that occur in high-income countries. They uniformly reported that 90 to 95 percent of those who attempt or die from suicide have a mental illness.

Moreover, in high-income countries, those who attempted suicide but were not sure they wanted to die (had a low "intent" to die) are a lot less likely die than in China because they usually used less lethal means.

"In the West, people with a low level of suicidal intent would typically take a couple of Valium, go to the emergency room, be washed out and sent home a couple of hours later," Phillips says.

Role of impulse

"You have people with very low intent (to die) who are using very lethal means. So, as a result, those who make impulsive acts of self-harm are more likely to end up dying," Phillips says.

Those who drink pesticides - unless they vomit or get to a high-level treatment center within two hours - are very likely to die. Treatment centers can't always save them.

Very severe impulsiveness can be a personality disorder. "But the people we see who have made impulsive (suicide) attempts aren't mentally ill," he observes.

Their personality does not seriously interfere with daily social activity. They have kids, go to work and people see them as normal.

"But they blow off steam pretty easily and they're a little more impulsive than others. In an acute crisis, they're going to respond in a dramatic way."

In cities, pesticides are used less frequently in suicides and attempts. Ingesting medications, hanging, jumping off buildings and drowning are more common.

One factor that has kept suicide rates from falling even more, however, is a lack of services for those in crisis.

In many places psychologists aren't trained adequately. Universities may have counseling clinics, but parents often are reluctant to send their children. "They're afraid they're going to be kicked out, which in some schools has actually happened. School authorities may be so fearful of suicide they'll tell a troubled student ... to go home."

It was only late last year that Shanghai got its first 24-hour suicide hotline, run by the nonprofit Life Education and Crisis Intervention Center.

Phillips says a new mental health law that took effect on May 1 should be "a game-changer."

The law standardizes mental health services, requiring general hospitals to set up special outpatient clinics or provide counseling, and calls for the training of more doctors about psychological problems. It allows police to send people for mental health screenings, but prohibits involuntary commitment, except for those with a severe mental illness or who are a danger to themselves or others.

Suicide in China

? Suicide has become one of the top cause of death for people aged 15 to 24 in China, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. But, unlike in many countries, Chinese youth do not have the nation's highest suicide rates.

? The highest suicide rates in China are among the elderly and rural women.

? About two-thirds of suicides occur in rural areas. That's not as high as 20 years ago, when the rural-urban ratio was 3 to 1, but still higher than in the West, where rural and urban suicide rates are comparable.

? Rates for women used to be 25 percent higher than for men. They have dropped to about the same level and very high rates for rural women have dropped. But rates for women are still higher than in the West, where male suicide rates are two to four times higher than the female rates.