$ A lot of suicides result from academic pressure and failure (plus the environment/parents hinting that you can't succeed in life if you can't do X, Y or Z properly).

Heavy debts are a significant contributor to suicide rates, fear and shame play a large part. The potential collapse of companies would heighten this risk, so here's some statistics on the Great Depression (bottom of the page):

http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html