The idea that happy rich countries have high suicide rates have little to no empirical support. Denmark and Norway have rates similar to the US for example.
I also suspect that a lot of religious countries have highly deflated figures. My guess would be that a lot of suicides are reported as accidents in countries where suicide may have legal and/or social reprecussions.
Another interesting factoid:
A study by the Berlin Jewish Community in November 1935 found that in the two-year period from 1932 to 1934 there 70.2 suicides per 100,000 Jews in Berlin, up sharply from 50.4 in 1924-26.
You can buy into these empirical observations, or not. Doesn't matter to me. I'm just chiming in on what I consider a relatively interesting topic.
I still think that extreme frustration is behind all of it, and that there's a subset of humans that react this way to frustration, while the majority do not react in this way to such frustrations.
