Comments on: Quote: Suicide is Nonexistent in Some Cultures

By: JET

JET — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:11:50 +0000

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.

By: Stacy

Stacy — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:16:59 +0000

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

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

By: Lemons

Lemons — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:30:35 +0000

@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

By: johnk

johnk — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:41:52 +0000

LOL at Dan, Neatorama's resident Scientologist.

Can you help me out with my Thetan problem?

By: Sid Morrison

Sid Morrison — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:58:49 +0000

@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.

By: PeteRepeat

PeteRepeat — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:09:32 +0000

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.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:53:28 +0000

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.

By: Mindpimp

Mindpimp — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:26:31 +0000

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.

By: ted

ted — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:44:40 +0000

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?

By: clinton labombard

clinton labombard — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:01:57 +0000

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.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:37:07 +0000

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

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:31:19 +0000

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?

By: christian gehrke

christian gehrke — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:53:02 +0000

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

By: Dan Smith

Dan Smith — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:14:46 +0000

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.

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:53:54 +0000

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.