Quote: Suicide is Nonexistent in Some Cultures

• Gabriel
  March 6th, 2008 at 3:53 am

  In the case of the Yahgan peoples, well, it’s pretty hard for suicide to exist in a peoples that are practically extinct. The last full-blooded Yahgan died in 1999.

• Dan Smith
  March 6th, 2008 at 4:14 am

  I wonder if said peoples simply never had the idea presented to them as a possible action. I mean, if I had never heard of anybody killing themself I might not think about killing myself every single god damned day of my horrid pitiful life….jk…but you get what I’m saying.

• christian gehrke
  March 6th, 2008 at 4:53 am

  The comment about suicide being rare in Irish-Catholics is not true.

  I live in Ireland and I we have an fairly high suicide rate here. I live in a small town in rural Ireland and have been here for 3 years. I can remember hearing about at least a dozen suicides just in the last couple years.

  Here are some facts about suicide by Irish Catholics:

  http://www.ias.ie/stats.htm

• Dan
  March 6th, 2008 at 5:31 am

  The government in the U.S. has graphed the number of psychiatrists in schools from 1960 to 1999 and the number of teen suicides from 1960 to 1999 and the graphs are EXACTLY parallel. So, how good, er, bad are the psychs?

• Jamie
  March 6th, 2008 at 5:37 am

  In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like you do in America.

• clinton labombard
  March 6th, 2008 at 6:01 am

  Suicide is rare to begin with. Given a smaller population you’re likely not to see it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t the possibility or likelihood of it happening. And yes, Jamie, there are homosexuals in Iran.

• ted
  March 6th, 2008 at 6:44 am

  I think Jamie was making a humorous point.

  I can see there being a lot of Muslims there, but how many black American females, Irish Catholics, and Mexicans are there in Egypt?

• Mindpimp
  March 6th, 2008 at 7:26 am

  I’d be curious to see what the suicide ratio is given various world religions, in Ireland it’s considered a go-directly-to-hell-do-not-pass-go type of sin so people are probably shit scared to kill themselves. In Japan with shintoism it’s considered wrong and you’re back to square one on the karma boardd but you’ll get out of it if you lead a good life as a slug or whatever. In countries with hardcore brainwashing religions it’s probably going to be much lower.

• Sandy
  March 6th, 2008 at 7:53 am

  I once read that suicide stats can be skewed for many reasons. For example, as suicide is a sin in some religions, you cannot be buried on consecrated ground if you commit suicide. Death certificates in those countries often show another cause of death (eg asphyxiation rather than hanging) in order to maintain the honour of the deceased and his/her family. My own father committed suicide by overdose but his death certificate shows cause of death as stroke and heart failure (which strictly speaking was the actual cause. I have no idea why the doctor did that - we are not religious, and his actual cause of death was pretty common knowledge.) In other countries it can mask issues such as when a girl is forced by her family to kill herself for “dishonouring” the family.

• PeteRepeat
  March 6th, 2008 at 8:09 am

  I’m taking an Abnormal Psych course and the last chapter we studied was on suicide. Apparently China has the highest suicide rate of any country, and it’s the only county where females out number males in completed suicide (women outnumber men in attempts worldwide). Half of all female suicides and forty percent of all suicides occur in China.

• Sid Morrison
  March 6th, 2008 at 8:58 am

  @PeteRepeat-
  The Red China numbers are skewed by all the newborn baby girls deciding to kill themselves rather than burden their family with a daughter.

• johnk
  March 6th, 2008 at 9:41 am

  LOL at Dan, Neatorama’s resident Scientologist.

  Can you help me out with my Thetan problem?

• Lemons
  March 6th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

  @Dan- Perhaps you should also examine the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s graph concerning the correlation between pirates and global warming?
  FYI, correlation != causation. Beginning-level stats.

  Actually on topic, Language Log featured a sci-fi short story not long ago with a similar idea– that we could accidentally decimate an alien race by introducing the concept of suicide:
  http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005416.html

• Stacy
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:16 am

  http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20080222.html#20080227

  Sorry that has no permalink… look at Wednesday the 27th.

• JET
  March 7th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

  Hungary and Finland are the two largest countries with a Finno-Ugric language. If Estonia is up there in suicide statistics, it’s entirely possible that their native tongue makes them more prone to kill themselves.

Want your own avatar? Get one for free at Gravatar!