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SUICIDE

12-year-old girl saves dad from suicide

A 12-year-old girl from Lecce in the southern Italian region of Puglia saved her father from suicide after reading a "desperate" text message from him.

12-year-old girl saves dad from suicide
The man, from Lecce in Puglia, was said to be having problems at work. Photo: Patrick Nouhailler/Wikipedia

The girl alerted her mother, who was in a town nearby, of his plans to take his own life after reading the message from her father, 42, on Easter Monday, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno reported on Wednesday.

The man, said to be having problems at work, was found by police “hanging from a noose” at his home, and “showing the first signs of suffocation”, the newspaper said.

The news comes on the same day the body of a man was found hanging from a stairwell in a school in Naples.

READ MORE HERE: Hanging man found in school with wrists tied

Italy’s suicide rate has risen in recent years as the country became mired in its most severe post-war recession, with 119 people taking their own lives between January and October 2013 – a 40 percent increase on the same period in 2012, according to a study in November by LinkLab, the centre of socio-economic research at Link Campus University in Rome.

Though the study found that those who committed suicide were mostly businessmen, because of “spiralling debts” and “sudden loss of employment”, cases of young people killing themselves are becoming more common.

Earlier this month, a student jumped to his death from a building at the University of Padua.

READ MORE HERE: Student jumps to death from university building

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