Suicide in New Zealand (Jim O'Connor)

[Barbara Laurence]

Excepting Finland and Norway, highest suicide rates are in three anglophone
countries (where individualism ideologies are deeper and best-developed).
Durkheim would say that people are over-integrated into society in Finland
(which gives you one form of suicide), while in the anglophone world social
integration is weakest (which gives you another form of suicide).  The
anomaly is the UK where suicide rates are very low, compared with either
the Nordic countries or the other anglophone countries.  I would speculate
(no more) that while Thatcherism is successful in terms of neoliberal
economics, there was much less success breaking the bonds of community,
including the imagined community of "England" or "Britain," still a
powerful sensibility in the UK, hence that social integration is relatively
strong there.
Jim O'C