Suicide rate

“ The morals of a state cannot fail to have a deep and lasting effect on the amount of crime and madness, and hence on the suicide rate. But it is by no means easy to prove by statistics the actual rate of influence; the social customs and modes of life are so very various, and the different laws of each state with regard to moral sins are so different. At the same time it cannot be denied that several important nations, among whom the virtues of social family life are specially studied, have a very high suicide rate, such as the Germans and Danes. ”

“ No amount of argument or inquiry seems, however, to invalidate the statement that a preponderant rate of suicide, and a high rate of madness exist in countries the farthest advanced in our modern ideas of civilization, and in education, and in modern modes of thought.
The intensely complicated state of modern society lays ambushes for us of myriads of dangers, difficulties, annoyances, illnesses, and worries, which to the denizen of a savage country are entirely unknown. That the influence of modern education is to increase the suicide-rate is proved by statistics of many sorts ”

“ As soon as accurate and trustworthy statistics of self-destruction became available in Europe, sociologists began to study the question whether suicide is controlled or regulated in any way by natural laws, and, if so, whether cosmical causes, such as climate, temperature, season, and weather, have any perceptible influence upon the suicide rate. ”

“ When we consider the fact that more than ten thousand persons take their own lives in the United States every year, that more than seventy thousand die annually by their own hands in Europe, and that the suicide rate is constantly and rapidly increasing throughout the greater part of the civilized world, we are forced to admit that, from the view-point of vital economy at least, the subject is one of the utmost gravity. In 1881 the annual suicide rate of the United States was only 12 per million of the population, and our total number of suicides was only 605 ”

“ In 2017, young men ages 15 to 19 killed themselves at a rate of 17.9 per 100,000, up from 13 per 100,000 in 2000. Contributing to the high youth depression and suicide rates in America are social media use and a greater willingness of families and officials to acknowledge suicide as a cause of death, the authors of the JAMA study said. ”

“ The more he studies the more will he be convinced that what we have to do with in suicide is a mental affliction not necessarily inevitable in its results and that may be much influenced by suggestion. Indeed, unfavorable suggestion is largely responsible for the increase in suicide that has been seen in recent years. Favorable suggestion might be made not only to stop the increase, but actually to reduce the suicide rate. ”

“ From the wish to the resolve and then to the deed itself are only successive steps when suggestion is constantly prodding the unfortunate individual. If we are going to reduce the suicide rate materially or, indeed, keep it from increasing beyond all bounds, this question must be squarely faced. Accounts of suicides are not news in the ordinary sense of the word and while they might find a place for legal and other purposes in a few lines of an obituary column, the present exploitation of them by the papers makes them a constantly recurring source of strong suggestion to go and do likewise. ”

“ As a general résumé of the consideration of the amount of Suicide, it appears that the civilized States of Europe (with three exceptions) show a gradual and uniform increase of Suicide rate; and that even since the beginning of the century self-destruction63 has increased, and still goes on increasing, more rapidly than the increase of population, and to a greater extent than the general death-rate. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the fall in the suicide rate was really due to the war as a specific cause, it would be most marked at the nation's capital, where the war attracted most attention and created most excitement. I went to the District Health Office and made an examination of the suicide records for a term of six years, beginning with 1895 and ending with 1900. I found not only that the depression in the Washington suicide curve was precisely synchronous with that of the national suicide curve, but that it was much deeper, amounting, in fact, to a sudden decrease of fifty per cent. ”

“ The suicide rate is much higher in the cities than in other districts. In general the suicide rate in the United States seems to be two or three times as high in our large cities as in the rest of the country. ”

“ Even in the United States, the tendency of soldiers to kill themselves is 81⁄2 times that of adult men in civil life.
This disproportionately high suicide rate in armies is not easy of explanation. In countries where military service is compulsory, and where inexperienced young men, torn suddenly from their families, are subjected to rigorous discipline in a strange and uncongenial environment, the suicidal impulse may be intensified by homesickness, loneliness, humiliation, and the monotony of camp or barrack life ”

“ During the past 20 years, the suicide rate has tripled among young people aged 1524. In fact, suicide has become the third leading cause of death in this age group. Last year alone, over 5,000 young Americans took their own lives, and many more attempted to do so. ”

“ Next come farmers, shopkeepers, and town artisans. And at the head of the list, with the highest suicide rate of [Pg 225] all, are physicians, journalists, teachers, and lawyers. The tendency of these professional classes to commit suicide is from one and a half to three times as great as that of the population generally. ”

“ The changes of rate produced by Race mingling can be studied, not only in countries where the process has been going on for centuries, but also in respect to recent movements of men. When Europeans emigrate, they are found to carry with them to their new home their peculiarities in regard to Suicide: the several races of Germans have a high rate at home, and on examination of the records of a country peopled by emigration, of New York, for instance, we find that the Germans there kill themselves more often than the Anglo-Saxon element, which has in its home a low suicide rate. ”

“ In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million? Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration, long after their environment has completely changed? ”

“ The average of suicide is found generally to run hand in hand with that of the ratio of total crime. Crime has increased for many years in all European countries except Britain and Holland. Suicide has increased in all except Norway and Russia, and90 but slightly in England and the Netherlands. Where there is an average annual increase of suicide, there is almost always seen a synchronous increase of crime.─Morselli. Still some countries with very small suicide rate have a very large proportion of crime, as Spain and Italy, which have an average of one convict to 8,130 inhabitants ”

“ Normally, the suicide rate should have risen, from January to June, in accordance with the seasonal law; but, instead of so doing, it fell rapidly at the very time when it should have been approaching its maximum. The colored population of the city, taken separately, was affected in the same way and to an even greater degree, the number of suicides among the blacks falling off fifty-six per cent., as compared with fifty per cent. among the whites. ”

“ With regard to the business of one’s life, it has been noticed that professions and trades, which by habits, physical and mental, bring women near to men, often tend to raise in an extraordinary degree the inclination of women to kill themselves.
It is a matter of the greatest difficulty to procure statistics sufficiently reliable of the numbers of each profession and trade, to couple with the numbers of known suicides of each trade and profession, for the purpose of obtaining a “professional suicide rate.” ”

“ Nuns, convent maids, and lay sisters, all numerous classes in Italy, give very few suicides.
In the higher walks of education the rates are all96 higher. Men of science, doctors, lawyers, military men, and the governing officials, all are very prone to self-destruction.
In those counties of France where there is the greatest attention paid to trade, agriculture, and commerce, the suicide rate is the highest; in counties where the development of business is slight the rate is lower. ”

“ As a result, apparently, of the publication of the details of two or three suicides of people prominent in that little Kansas town, there broke out an epidemic of self-destruction which culminated in the sunny, flowery month of June, and which carried the annual suicide rate from about 90 per million to 1,665 per million—a rate five times greater than that of Saxony. ”

“ Life weariness was the suicide cause, which French authors supposed to be excited in English people by their climate; and in like manner to their error in attributing a heavier suicide rate to England than to their own country; they erred in assigning tædium vitæ as a fertile suicide cause in England. Modern observations disclose but very few English suicides due to this influence; we islanders require as a rule a stronger stimulus than this one to induce us to terminate our existences. Misery and despair cause a very large number of cases ”

“ It may be stated here, as a generalization, that whilst the medium course of life is the safest, the extremes of riches and indulgence, and their reverse, poverty and asceticism, both increase the suicide rate in about an equal proportion. ”

“ There are countries in Europe in which the suicide rate among such children is even higher than it is in France. In every country it has gone on increasing and the awful thing is that the suicide rate is increasing more rapidly among children than it is among adults, though among adults it doubles every twenty years. ”

“ After the earthquake, when, if physical sufferings had anything to do with suicide, it might be expected that the self-murder rate would go up, there was so great a reduction that only three suicides were reported in two months. Some of this reduction was due to inadequate records, but there can be no doubt that literally a hundred lives were saved from suicide by the awful catastrophe that leveled the city. Men and women were homeless, destitute and exposed to every kind of hardship, yet because all those around them were suffering in the same way, every one seemed to be reasonably satisfied. ”

“ In some of its aspects, suicide raises psychological questions which bristle with difficulties, but which, nevertheless, pique the curiosity and demand explanatory answers. Why, for example, is the rate of suicide strictly dependent everywhere upon season and weather? Why is the tendency to self-destruction lessened by war? What is the explanation of suicide in the face of impending death, when there is still a fair chance of escape, or when the natural death that is threatened would involve less suffering than the act of self-destruction? ”

“ The theory that we hold more strongly to life as we approach its natural conclusion is contradicted by statistics, which everywhere show that the last half of life exhibits a great increase in the rate of suicide. And here it may be pointed out that as to the age of greatest frequency, suicide and crime are diametrically opposed. ”

“ The rate of suicide observable in a race is seen to be curiously associated with stature; the original inhabitants of Germany were tall and fair; these had originally a high rate, and descendants of this race shew the same peculiarity to-day. In proportion as these fair tall Germans infiltrate another country, just as certainly does the suicidal total grow. Morselli states that in Italy the rate increases from south to north, gradually, in proportion as the stature also increases, until the German states are reached. There is, however, another tall fair race, who have a low rate, the Slavonic ”

“ The same two modes of preventive influence that we have over disease in general can be applied to suicide. The physician can modify the mental attitude in individual cases and thus save people from themselves and then he can, by his influence in various ways upon public opinion, lessen the death rate from suicide. For this purpose, just as with regard to infectious disease, it is important for him to appreciate the social and individual conditions that predispose to suicide, as well as the factors that are more directly causative. ”

“ The female tendency comes to its maximum before thirty years of age.
In England the ratio of female suicide between the years of fifteen and twenty exceeds the male by more than one-tenth. In Italy it has been observed the rate becomes high, at an earlier age than in Europe generally. Youth is a fertile suicide stage, and after a stationary period at a high rate, there comes another period marking the decay of mind and the declension of life ”

“ Moreover, veterans who attempted suicide had a substantially higher mortality rate compared with the non-suicide, e.g., heart diseases, cancer and traffic accidents. Thus, mental health problems appeared to be significantly correlated with general health and mortality. The above mentioned study also reported on women suicides among veterans. Among female suicide attempters, completed suicide appeared to be the leading cause of death, while in males, it was second leading cause. ”