Suicide in New Zealand (Jim O'Connor)

[Carrol Cox]

New Zealand is almost as far south as Canada and Norway are north.
Also about the same difference as Oregon and the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan, which at one time at least led the U.S. in suicide rates.
Social causes must be responsible for the relatively low rate in
Sweden, since it pretty much shares long nights with Norway and
Finland. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is a major condition of
suicide (though since most sufferers *don't* kill themselves, it cannot
be the deciding cause. In general, however, most suicides suffer from
either depression (clinical or SAD) or bipolar disorder. And I suspect
that one should look to social factors for reasons victims of those
ailments do *not* commit suicide rather than for reasons people
*do* suicide. That is, social relations can give a reason to live to
people whose personal condition might otherwise  motivate them
to kill themselves, but social relations probably do not lead to
suicide. I do know a number of people who claim that the only
reason they did not kill themselves was consideration for family
and friends. In the decade before I was diagnosed with depression
I frequently made mental lists of the people that my death would
hurt and speculated under what conditions that list might shorten.

?????

Carrol

 Jim O'Connor wrote:


> 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