If that sentence made you a little uncomfortable, you are not alone. Talking about suicide and mental health is not only important, but it is the need of the hour.
Suicide is a notoriously complex issue because it is influenced by a number of societal issues. Everything from the pandemic to paper towel sales has been shown to influence the rate at which people kill themselves, which is very bizarre when you think about it.
Hence, we attempt to paint a picture of severity of the issue and spread awareness on how important it is to talk about it.
800,000
the amount of people that die by committing suicide each year or the population of Guyana or the number of people who have died by contracting the Covid-19 virus so far.
Let’s follow Jacob, who recently graduated from college and has been working really hard to get a job of his dreams in San Francisco.
The more hours he puts in, the more closer the goal looks. However, on one day he reached late to work and met the wrath of his boss who then proceeded to let Jacob go.
Devastated he had no one to turn to with bills piling. Thinking all of this is too much to handle, he wondered what the point of living is if he was going to end up homeless in a week or two. Everything felt pointless.
Let’s explore where Jacob lives!
So first let’s see how suicide rates differ amongst all the countries. The graph below allows you to choose a country and explore the average suicide rate in the years 1990-2017.
Choose your country:
Brief summary:
We can see the that in the United States deaths caused by committing suicide have increased at a faster rate than any other country.
It is hard to point out a single reason why, instead it is an indication of the overall conditions in the country. Hence, we can see why Jacob and many others like him are having a difficult time.
We also provide information below on the Top 10 countries by global annual average of suicide rates.
Select the year: 1990 2017 1990.00
However, some of the countries had kept showing the high rate of suicide.
Here are top 10 countries that show high average suicide rate during 1990~2017.Click the button and check which countries belong to the 10.
From the result, we find Greenland shows the highest suicide rate, and Guam, Guyana, Kazakhstan, Lithuania,Northern Mariana Islands,Qatar,South Korea,Sri Lanka and Suriname belong to the top 10 countries
So we know that the rates of suicide are different in all countries. But how does it fare on the individual level?
Let’s look at the ages
Determing why someone chooses to commit suicide is complex. However, looking at demographics such as age can be useful. Individuals in the same age group typically go through similar types of experiences and similar amount of growth and maturity. We can also differentiate between age groups as typically people in different age groups have different problems and people in the same group can have similar kinds of challenges.
Select a country you would like to investigate and compare it with the summary of the data in the Boxplot.
Choose your country:
View the summary of each agegroup(Boxplot)
Ahah. We can see there is a lot of variation in the suicide rates across age groups of countries. This might hint us about how well the country has treated citizens of that age group. Countries that have policies on free education and food stamps have had lower rates of suicides amongst age group 1-15. Countries with lower taxes and more employment have had lower rates in ages 15-50. And countries with good retirement plans have had lower rates amongst citizen that are more than 70 years old.
Jacob is out of a job. This is a pretty stressful situation for him and it is important that the country he lives in (United States) provides employment opportunities for a hard working citizen like him.
We can move now onto the next major detail in the data.
Difference between genders
Surprise!
There is a significant difference in suicide rates between males and females. The difference is extremely high in some countries and less extreme others. I will let you explore and find out which gender is more prone to suicide.
Male or Female?
Correct!
You can check it by a country or a region.
Choose your country:
Again, there could be numerous reasons and hence not fair to come to conclusions. However, we can highlight some historically consisten facts. Suicide committed by men are often more violent than women and hence it is more difficult for some other person to intervene and try to stop them.
Further, it is always said in popular culture and in religous sayings that men are supposed to be strong, or protectors, as seen in phrases such as “man of the house”, or caretaker. Under pressure of the aforementioned expectations, men don’t share their weakness and find it much easier to end their pain by committing suicide.
Jacob too might have at some point felt this way. Hence, it is vital what we communicate with each other, what we show on media platforms and pop culture and what we teach the kids.
Incorrect!
You can check it by a country or a region.
Choose your country:
Again, there could be numerous reasons and hence not fair to come to conclusions. However, we can highlight some historically consisten facts. Suicide committed by men are often more violent than women and hence it is more difficult for some other person to intervene and try to stop them.
Further, it is always said in popular culture and in religous sayings that men are supposed to be strong, or protectors, as seen in phrases such as “man of the house”, or caretaker. Under pressure of the aforementioned expectations, men don’t share their weakness and find it much easier to end their pain by committing suicide.
Jacob too might have at some point felt this way. Hence, it is vital what we communicate with each other, what we show on media platforms and pop culture and what we teach the kids.
Phew!
What have we learned?
As you would have concluded too, studying suicides is pretty complicated. And partly, that is the reason why so many people fall victim to it! So how do we stop it?
The answer lives in our daily lives. The best thing you can do is lend your ears and listen to other people.
Yes, Listen!
A lot of suicide deaths are caused due to the feeling of isolation! If you can check in with your friends, family and loved ones, it goes a long way! Next, we need to change the way we talk about suicides.
We need to make it more normal and comfortable for people like Jacob to express their emotions and difficulties. We need to start accepting that our preconceived biases may be flawed. More than anything, we need to be together!
