A person decides to commit suicide... What is behind this? It is with bitterness that we have to state that the topic included in the title continues to be relevant for the Armed Forces. Why is this happening? Has it always been like this? To answer these and other questions, it is useful to refer to the history. As I was told by very competent sociologists who once studied this problem, information about suicides appeared virtually simultaneously with data on the emergence of Earth's civilization. In different historical epochs, and sometimes in different strata of the same society, suicide was given opposite moral assessments. The attitude to this act depended on the prevailing philosophical, religious, legal, and scientific views. For example, according to the beliefs of the ancient Germans, only men went to heaven, as well as women who committed suicide after the death of their spouse. Many people probably remember the episode from the movie "Vikings", when one of the warriors plunges a sword into himself and dies with the name of the god Odin on his lips, preferring death to captivity. Among some other peoples, suicide was also considered preferable to polon or slavery. This was the case in India, China, and Japan, where in some cases voluntary self-immolation carried the stamp of a social prescription. On the contrary, in Sparta and Athens, the corpses of suicides were burned, emphasizing the ritual contempt for them. In the philosophical works of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers, we find condemnation of suicide. In Ancient Rome, as a rule, it was also evaluated negatively. In Russia, the attitude to suicide was determined by the negative assessment of the Orthodox Church. Suicides were not buried by priests, they were not allowed to be buried in cemeteries, usually burial was carried out at country roads. Peter the Great introduced harsh punishments for suicide attempts. Then they were reduced, but, according to the Code on ... Read more