Suicide is a touchy subject for most people...even taboo, perhaps, to talk about in some circles. However, I feel as though it needs to be explored further as a cultural phenomenon due to our current evolutionary position. If we look to the animal kingdom for example of suicide, we won't find much. There are lemmings that follow each other to their death but it is not a cognitive decision of demise. Or we can maybe cite some species of spiders like the Black Widow who allow their offspring to devour them after hatching so they do not have to travel far for their first meal. Once again, that seems more of a sacrifice than a cognitive suicide that humans experience.
Most humans, when contemplating suicide, cite some sort of emotional distress that they are unable (or unwilling) to overcome and then resort to ending their lives. Rates have gone up and down in the past 60 years depending on economy and cultural climates. For example, around the 1950's the rate of marriage-aged male suicide was quite high because of the emphasis the culture put on males at the time to be the bread winner and if they couldn't provide for their families, they felt as if they became obsolete and possibly a burden and/or not a man. This kind of societal pressure can be a huge stress factor for those facing it head on. (Statistics from suicide.org)
When I think about today's cultural climate and my generation--just graduated or graduating college--I see a large amount of people dealing with depression and anxiety. I also have seen other emotional disorders in the younger generation like ADD. Why are so many young people faced with emotional barriers and obstacles to overcome? Is it because we live in a culture that is over-diagnosing? Is it something the medical community has missed for several decades? Or is this a new phenomenon? If it is new, is it cultural, biological, or both? Also, is it causing young people so much emotional distress that they take their own lives?
I realize I have jumped around a lot in this article. Suicide is a complex subject with various reasons, methods, and cultural implications. What I'm really driving at is an open discussion about suicide. I struggle with the concept almost daily of why is happens, how it can be prevented, whether there is something cultural that can be shifted or if it's purely a biological issue. The fact that it happens across cultural boundaries for very different reasons makes it harder to pinpoint. Why humans? If our drive is to survive and pass on survival techniques to the next generation, why do some of us end our lives on purpose?
Perhaps we have reached a stage in our evolutionary drive that has forced humans to create something to survive against. Back when we were barely out of the trees, we had to survive against predators, cold, heat, disease, hunger, thirst...everything. Now we are comfortable creatures for the most part. We have a pill for just about everything and we hunt our predators for sport now. What do we have to survive against? The diseases that do slow us down (cancer, HIV/AIDS) aren't threatening the population to a great degree. Maybe the psychological issues we have were created to challenge us to survive against them. The people that are successful in survival can pass on their genes to the next generation, obviously, and make the survival gene stronger.
What do you think?
***Please do not mistake me for being insensitive to people suffering from psychological disorders of any kind. This is simply my opinion and I am certainly not playing down the seriousness of the issue or trying to diagnose anyone or even give advice on the subject.
do suicide rates vary significantly across cultures? I know there are some diseases- anorexia and agoraphobia- that are culture bound.
ReplyDeleteSide note- raised as a Catholic and was taught that suicide is the only unforgivable sin. This is apparently WRONG. Post- Vatican II the Catholic church will carry out funerary rights for people who took their own lives, even though its against God's command. What do other religions say about it?
That's a very good question. I'm going to dig up whatever I can find about cultural stats. I'll give a follow up!
ReplyDeleteBankston, W. B., Allen, H., & Cunningham, D. S. (1983). Religion and Suicide: A Research Note on Sociology's "One Law"'. Social Forces, 62(2), 521-528. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
ReplyDeleteHere's one source on the influence of Catholicism on suicide rate in Louisiana.
They (Pope (how fitting) and Danigelis) actually found that Catholics had a higher rate of suicide than other groups. This research was trying to contradict Durkheim's theory that Catholics had a lower suicide rate than Protestants. Pope and Danigelis were, obviously, successful. I almost want to take this study with a grain of salt though because their intent was just to prove Durkheim wrong...
On the other hand, the actual authors (not the one's who conducted the study the article discusses) describe the shift of thought in the Catholic religion--they are Catholic but they have moved away from the particulars of the religion. Therefore, religion could just be a coincidence in the incidence and have nothing to do with the suicide rate. It could very well be anything at all. Even other Catholic countries with high suicide rates are so removed from the traditional Catholic ways, it's hard to pin down as Catholicism as being related.