Suicide

[angus]

Frustration. 

The frustration of Tibetan monks (whose holy leader must remain in exile) leads them to set themselves ablaze.  The frustration of the adolescent female in Taliban-controlled waziristan who must marry the man her father picks out for her leads her to jump off a cliff.  The frustration of an abused and neglected teen whose guidance councillor says nothing more profound, when the teen visits him to ask for help, than "drugs are bad, mkay?" takes his own life with his father's handgun.  The frustration of an authoritarian dictator who only two years ago ruled all of Europe and much of Northern Africa, but who now will be humiliated at the hands of lowly Soviet army sergeants unless he bites down on that sodium cyanide tablet.

It's extreme frustration, man.  That's the way it happens.

[angus]

From what I understand a fair share of suicides are failed failed attempts - people who deep down may not really want it but is doing it as a cry for help, etc.

If you're failing, then you're not really trying.  I agree with you that the "attempts" are attention grabs, but I presumed that the question asked about those truly doing it.

Beet, I'm with you:  even in my darkest moments I never contemplated such a thing as taking my own life.  Part of it is because I'm not very spiritual to begin with.  If I had a soul, then I might not be afraid of letting it move on, but if all I have is this life, and no matter how bad it gets, then it is preferable to nothingness.  Also, it just seems wrong to kill myself.  Also, it is a matter of simple vanity. 

Then you grow up and have a family, and the pressures are even greater, and the stress is even greater, but so is the will to live.  So now you are compelled to keep grinding it out because others depend upon you for moral, economic, and practical support.  Now it becomes even more wrong to end your own life.  And now you have even more reason for the simple vanity that pushes you forward.  Life gets harder, but at the same time so does the need to go on living it.

I agree that you can't truly know, but speculation is all we can do, since you can't really ask the victim of a successful suicide attempt anything, can you?  Well, I guess you could ask, but you needn't wait around for an answer.  Still, as nearly as I can tell, what they all have in common, whether they do it in protest of some political policy, or as a way to draw attention to some great perceived wrong, or as an escape from a harsh reality, or as a means to avoid a difficult decision, or simply to avoid the embarrassment of being taken alive and tried in a court of law, the one common thread is that they're all extremely frustrated. 

Maybe we have just never been quite so frustrated.

[angus]

Angus, my point was that from what I recall from psychology class, some people not really intending to kill themselves still end up doing it, because things go wrong, they push it too far, etc. And that this, furthermore, was fairly common.

point taken.  We're all engaging in a little pop psychology, so we should be careful.  

I can't remember what my psychology book said about it.  Been a long time since I had a psychology class.  I did do a little google search after your post and found that one of the world's leading experts on suicide says that it comes about when folks seek a solution to a problem, and that solution is cessation of consciousness.  But at some point he does talk about extreme frustration, so I guess I was on to something.  People with high standards get frustrated when progress is hindered, or something like that.

The only two cases I ever dwell on are Ludwig Boltzmann, who hung himself while vacationing because folks didn't accept his statistical model of thermodynamics, and the mother of a boy in my first grade class who jumped of a very high bridge after her husband left her.  I only know that because I was sitting very near the front of the bus on the last day that the bus let the boy off at his house and his elder sister got on the bus to explain to the bus driver that he wouldn't need to stop there any more after that day because they were going to live with an aunt in Los Angeles.  Both of those individuals were very serious about killing themselves, I'd imagine.

[angus]

I doubt religion has much to do with it,

I agree.  Buddhism is against it, yet there are Buddhist monks who set themselves ablaze.  Islam is against it, yet there are Muslims who kill themselves in protest.  Catholicism is against it, yet there are Catholic priests who take their own lives.  The ancient Egyptians were resurrectionists, but there were Egyptian rulers and citizens who killed themselves.  It seems that most religions are against it, yet most religions have practicioners who kill themselves.  If you're without religion, then you would seem to have the most reason not to commit suicide, and yet there are, among the irreligious, those who kill themselves.  There are also cults whose members are directed to commit suicide, and among those members there are always a few who refuse, such as the Jonestown people who survived by hiding under their cots.  Overall, religion (or lack thereof) seems not to be a deciding factor, although there might be a slight correlation, if someone cares to look that up.

There is, on the other hand, a strong correlation of suicide rates by region.  Polar countries have higher suicide rates than equatorial ones.  Even in the united states, this trend holds among the states:  Alaska has the highest rate per 100K residents, with Montana and North Dakota not far behind.  On the other hand, the suicide rate is fairly low in Georgia, Texas, and California.  There is some noise, though, with Connecticut having the lowest rate even though it's farther north than, say, New Mexico, which has a relatively high rate.  That may also have some economic bias attached, though.  I've never seen such data "corrected" for economic indicators.  Anyway, the theory I read some time ago (I think when it came up on this forum, actually), was that places with very long nights (or days) make people weird and despondent.  There was also a trend in homicide rates that ran the opposite:  high in equatorial regions and low in polar regions.  So, if you're in Fargo, you kill yourself but not others.  If you're in Atlanta, you'll kill others but not yourself.  Something in that, I think. 

There were also a rash of articles about why suicide rates were high in the "happiest places" a few years back.  E.g., Norway and Denmark have very high "happy" scale scores, and fairly high suicide rates as well.  Mexico and Egypt have fairly low "happy" scale scores, and fairly low suicide rates as well.  That was being explained via relative comparisons by some researchers.  Other researchers didn't put much stock into it and suggested that the long, dark winters had more to do with it.  Still others pointed to population density and tried to make some correlation with that.  Actually, in the US that trend sort of holds (e.g., Alaska versus Connecticut).

[angus]

Surely you bear no grudges, old top?  Seriously, I can't imagine that you bear anyone any grudge.

[angus]

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.