Nations of suicide

Posted on July 14, 2009 by David Hume

The World Values Survey 2005 has a question about whether suicide is every justifiable. Below the fold are the responses for a list of nations. Not to put too fine a point on it: the more open a nation seems to suicide the less likely I feel I’d want to kill myself if I lived in that nation. This follow the paradox that the more unhealthy a nation’s social indices the more religious it is, though within nations the religious tend to be healthier and happier.

nationsofsuicide

This entry was posted in data and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Nations of suicide

  1. John says:
    July 14, 2009 at 4:41 pm

    Here is data I saw once looking at suicide rates in the USA by state:

    http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2000/04/12/31problems_chart3.h19.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2000/04/12/31problems_chart3.h19.html&levelId=2100

    One thing I noticed is that “red” states have higher suicide rates than “blue” states. My theory in explaining the state-by-state and national results above is the notion of individual responsibility. If people feel that they are responsible for their own lives, they will take failure more seriously than people who feel that their fate is governed by society. A high suicide rate may be a price we pay for living in a free society.

    PS: I was surprised that Japan wasn’t an outlier. I would have thought they would see suicide differently than the US/Europe.

  2. kurt9 says:
    July 15, 2009 at 8:48 am

    I notice the same thing. The countries where suicide is more permissible are places where the life style is better and I would want to live more. The countries with the greatest intolerance towards suicide are the places with the suckiest life style where I would more likely want to commit suicide.

  3. Caledonian says:
    July 15, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    Laws are generally made to prevent people from doing a thing. When there is no perceived desire to be restrained, there are no laws regarding its restraint.

    In places where people are happy, there’s no need to create social norms against suicide. A stigma is attached to suicide in the places where lots of people would otherwise kill themselves.

    Peaceful people don’t talk about peace. Cultural constructions that emphasize the importance of serenity and peace occur only in societies with a lot of furor and dissent to repress. Same deal.

  4. Sister Y says:
    July 15, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    John – red states also have more guns.

    (I’m against restrictions on guns or suicide, but I think people want to grab onto social and cultural differences to explain differing suicide rates when there’s a perfectly good mundane reason. Same thing with the high female suicide rate in China and India – people want to explain it with the “position of women” and Confucianism and whatever, but it’s more likely a consequence of the fact that lethal poisons are available in those countries, and not in the United States; women seem to prefer to use poison to commit suicide.)

    Slovenia, WTF?

    I’d like to see cultural attitudes toward suicide plotted against actual suicide rates, but I’m too lazy to do it.

  5. ziel says:
    July 15, 2009 at 5:29 pm

    Nearly half the population of Japan thinks that suicide is never justifiable? What are we going to learn next – that 75% of Germans think it’s acceptable to jaywalk?

  6. Chris says:
    July 16, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    #2: The countries with the greatest intolerance towards suicide are the places with the suckiest life style where I would more likely want to commit suicide.

    If you know that your country is below average, why commit suicide when you can commit emigration? Either you’ll succeed and your life will probably improve, or you’ll fail and be deported, or you’ll fail and be killed for trying (if you live in a REAL hellhole country, or run into one of those self-appointed border patrol groups in the country you are trying to move to).

    P.S. I wonder if the question was somehow mistranslated into Slovenian? If you exactly inverted the responses they’d be unremarkable, and a translation error could have accidentally asked the opposite question.

  7. kurt9 says:
    July 17, 2009 at 10:18 am

    If you know that your country is below average, why commit suicide when you can commit emigration?

    I agree. I just noted that the places with more liberal attitudes towards suicide tended to be the more pleasant places. Of course, if the choice offered me is either emigration or suicide, I choose emigration.

    I believe if you are relatively young and have a future, that suicide is a cop-out. However, if you are old and have no future, I’m not sure what the point to living is, unless you expect dramatic breakthroughs in anti-aging bio-medicine in the near future.

    Currently, I believe in the need for the assisted suicide option because it is often the only way to get a decent cryo-preservation (with neurostructure largely intact) in the event of a degenerative condition like brain cancer or to avoid the financial “spin-down” associated with keeping people on life support with no hope of regeneration.

Comments are closed.