An early article I wrote for The Irish Times, in 1990, was about a survey which found that Irish men were less happy about the changing nature of this society than women. I was trying to create a context for the escalating trend of male suicide, particularly young men, a problem which has multiplied fourfold.
But the more urgent the questions, the less willing we are to face them. Last week this newspaper published a series of articles about suicide involving a half-dozen journalists and three pages of newsprint over three days. Statistics were advanced and many experts quoted at length but, at the end, the overwhelming sense was of the desire, yet again, to ignore the elephant in the room.
It goes without saying that every suicide represents a catastrophe in the lives of those who know and have loved the deceased. But, were it not for the massive increase in male suicide, this would, in social terms, be a marginal issue. It is male suicide that jumps out of the statistics: between 80 and 90 per cent, depending on the year.
If detectives were investigating this issue, these articles would have sent them off in search of the dogs that refused to bark. If the level of suicide among, say, refugees was five to 10 times the level in the indigenous population, would a national newspaper run a series of articles on suicide in which the mention of refugees was confined to two paragraphs in one out of 14 articles, and no attempt made to examine why refugees, in particular, might be prone to self-destruction?
If the affected group was women, or gays, or Travellers, would we find the same tendency to move rapidly from the specific to the general?
Bizarrely, the briefest outline of the calamity of male suicide was followed by a paragraph assuring us that female suicide was rising also, even though this remains the merest hint of a statistical blip. I have noted this tendency before: it is as if we wish the level of female suicide to rise so we can avoid a discussion that might demolish our collective belief system.
The main belief under threat is that men have it all their own way while women are oppressed and tyrannised. Looking at the facts about suicide would force us to reconsider this, so we talk about anything except the elephant staring us in the face.
A decade ago it was fashionable to connect suicide with unemployment; now, with real unemployment virtually eliminated and the suicide figures going through the roof, we talk about depression, alcohol, ecstasy, seratonin levels, anything that sounds remotely plausible but avoids difficult questions.
Although each suicide may be unique, such an overwhelming societal pattern must yield some kind of social key. Schopenhauer wrote: "It will generally be found that as soon as the terrors of life reach the point where they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life." The question is: what about life in modern Ireland is so terrifying for men, especially young men?
It is surely obvious that to talk about depression, drug-taking and chemical imbalances is mixing up cause and effect. Perhaps such discussion is convenient because it emphasises the individual victim rather than the social context in which increasing numbers of men die by their own hands.
There is growing awareness in the psychiatric profession that a great deal of what we label depression relates to the external conditions of an individual's life, and to his or her perception of these.
To say that depression is the cause of suicide is like saying that animal ill-health is the cause of foot-and-mouth.
The proper questions, I believe, are: Is there a particular kind of depression associated with suicide, and what is its cause? Why does the sadness of men prove terminal much more often than the sadness of women? Is it too much to ask that we might inquire into the particular griefs of our young men? Are we so terrified of upsetting our sacred cows that we let our sons die rather than ask questions?
To draw inferences from the fact that alcohol is found in the system of a particular suicide victim seems only marginally more logical than saying petrol is the cause of traffic accidents because crashed cars are found to have petrol in their tanks.
Perhaps people drink to numb fear of death - or life? The ecstasy and seratonin theories, likewise, have been comprehensively demolished. The British psychologist Oliver James, in Britain on the Couch, wrote that, once the focus was broadened to include the emotional life of the individual, the link between ecstasy use and low seratonin levels revealed itself as an effect rather than a cause.
What we need to establish, he argued, is what causes people to consume such drugs in the first place.
This brings us back to the question we in Ireland seek to avoid: what is breaking the spirits of our young men?
jwaters@irish-times.ie