Sir, – Tony Bates states correctly that we cannot discuss suicide any more (Opinion, December 1st). Apart from repeating the conventional mantra that it is a “mental health issue”, which is another taboo subject in its own right, we are unable to countenance the possibility that (a) it might be a rational decision, and (b) that it can appear selfish to us.
I am not a mental health practitioner, nor even involved in suicide prevention. My interest in suicide is purely scientific and I have spent the last 10 years researching the problem with an open mind and the motivation to help in some way.
The notion that all suicides are “carried out” (we are no longer allowed to use the word “committed”) by people in a state of alcohol or drug-induced depression just does not fit the observed facts. Of course there are depressed and suicidal people out there who could benefit from psychiatric intervention, counselling and suicide-prevention programmes, but there are also people who are in a perfectly normal state of mind and who make a rational decision to end their lives for whatever reason. The all too common lament of many families and friends, reported in the media, TV interviews and phone-ins, is that the “victim was a balanced, person, full of life and planning a holiday or course of study” – hardly the profile of a clinically-depressed individual?
Indeed, there are several other reasons. Emile Durkheim, the “father of sociology” believed that the prevalence of fairly constant rates of suicides across religions and cultures suggested that it was somehow a “normal” feature of human society. A report by the Suicide Research Foundation under Dr Ella Arensman found that separation and unemployment are possible factors and a project by Teagasc led by sociologist Aine Macken-Walsh looked at the problems of suicide among elderly widower farmers with no families. A study in the 1970s by two Princeton University economists, Hammermesh and Soss, found that economic factors can explain part of the worldwide phenomenon that male suicides tend to rise with age whereas female suicide rates peak at about 40 and then decline somewhat.
And finally, a thoroughly documented study of cotton farmers in India, where suicide was the result of bankruptcies among the highly-indebted farmers, showed that when the government stepped in to give financial aid to the bereaved families, the suicide rate actually increased, as the male breadwinners now had a means of providing for their families.
It is a curious paradox that the mental health specialists should act as “mindguards” and stifle any discussion of suicides outside of the mental health category. No wonder that their interventions seem to have little impact on the annual suicide rate.
The correct scientific response where an action is not producing the desired result is to question the rationale behind this action, examine the problem again and try a different approach. When we can accept that suicide can be a rational decision – even if we disagree with the motives for that decision – then we will be half-way there to providing useful support to that person, whether it be a financial problem, loneliness, a perception of having failed in one’s career or personal life, or whatever.
Describing every potential suicide as a mental health issue will not produce this necessary openness. – Yours, etc,