Another person in my circle of friends took his own life this weekend. It would be a misrepresentation to call him a friend; he wasn’t. He was a good friend of good friends, but only an acquaintance for me. The news upset me anyway, as it should.
I think about suicide in New Zealand often. The rate at which our citizens, particularly our young men, commit suicide is a warning siren. It is a clear signal of deep-seated problems within our society. We are failing in some essential task. Something is not right.
It wasn’t always like this. The rate at which our young men kill themselves has climbed astronomically in the last century. Today’s most vulnerable age band, 15-24, had a suicide rate of about 5 per 100,000 from the 1920s through to the 1970s. Then it started to climb. In the mid-80s it skyrocketed into the 20-per range, and by the 90s it had peaked around 27-per. This was over a fivefold increase in our suicide rate for this band. Since that peak numbers have declined, but still remain around the 20-per mark.
A massive increase. What happened? What went wrong?
New Zealand made a lot of changes in the 80s. The New Right experiment that began here with the fourth Labour government in 1984 was a huge political upheaval that altered the very foundation of New Zealand identity. For over a decade, massive changes were wrought upon this country, changes that are still being worked through today. In the process, we were made into the world’s most perfect example of a vision so vividly expressed by Thatcher in 1987: in New Zealand, there was to be no such thing as society.
I think – (no, that’s isn’t right, this isn’t a carefully considered thesis, this is instinct) – I feel that this is where things went wrong. The more we dismantled our society, the more our young men killed themselves. It’s such a tempting equation. When we made the Rational Economic Actor the basis for our public life, how could anything but chaos possibly follow?
But that’s too simple. There’s more, much more, going on here. New Zealand’s culture of social isolation, our iconic Man Alone with a frontiersman fear of weakness. The mental illness that runs through our communities like an underground stream. The cultural slippage as English and Irish and Maori became lost in the murk of New Zealand’s unformed identity with little but stoicism and the All Blacks to invest with meaning. No matter how much I’d like to lay the blame on the rise of a political ideology I oppose, it would be foolish to do so. This is in no way simple.
All these thoughts. Then, periodically, I hear that someone I know has ended his or her own life, and it all becomes suddenly illuminated. But the light comes from the wrong angle, throwing strange shadows, and it’s impossible to see anything well enough to understand it. Just get confused. All I can make out is where I started, so that’s what I think, over and over: something is very wrong in our society.
And I wonder what I am doing to help make it right.
(NZ suicide trends data is here.)
(Rest in peace, James.)
12 thoughts on “Suicide in NZ”
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Damn. Which James? I’m trying to work out if I knew him or not.
It’s a James connected with high-school days in the Hutt. I think only one or two people reading this blog would know him, and I’m 99% sure they already heard through other channels.
I feel uncomfortable putting more details up.
Almost had me worried there…
A vital first step this country needs to address this disaster is the repeal or ammendent of Section 71 of the Coroners Act 2006, “Restrictions on making public of details of self-inflicted deaths,” as soon as possible.
If we can’t, as a society, talk openly and publicly about the specifics of this tragedy, then we’ll never be able to address it.
vis a vis: I’ve sometimes wondered if the difference in suicide stats between the past and the present includes changing attitudes to suicide – increasing openness and acknowledgement – as well as an actual increase in suicides.
Andrew – could do. The research reports touch on this but not too deeply. Worth noting that over the same period, suicide rates of adult men have dropped in roughly the same proportion that teenage rates have increased, so while that isn’t proof, I think it’s enough to suggest that this is a real trend and not an artefact of data.
I believe homosexual men are also over-represented in the suicide statistics. Whether this is true or not I don’t know.
I knew two young men who killed themselves in the age bracket 15-24 and I assume that mental illness was behind it. On the outside, at least, I have no other explanantion.
I’ve known over a dozen guys who have killed themselves and maybe two women. With nearly all the guys I knew despair over drug problems was a factor. Exceptions to that include an intern doctor who buckled under lack of sleep and insane demands on him professionally and a few who killed themselves because another guy they were close to did. In one sad case a family of brothers died after the youngest of four was hit by a car and all the other brothers decided to follow him one at a time. I think the drug problem we have and stuff upper lip attitude (going to counselling for example, is often seen as a major act of weakness instead of courage) are both heavily at fault.
-Sal/Seraphs Folly
This is all sad.
Three things I see.
1: we expect to much of the male in the society. maybe not the ladies but the men foster a hard line to manly-ness. It effects a lot of people. The lack of communication between males on a “deep” level make them lonley and confused.
2: tall poppie.
3: long winters and no christmas in there to brighten things up. Living in the northen part of the world you see that the whole christmass thing is placed well. right when you need it. bright and family centered it helps so much in the dark of winter.
Which James.
Very sorry to hear of this, and my condolences to yourself, Morgue, and all
The continual erosion of mental health services in NZ and the general malaise/attitude surrounding suicide scares me, and has always scared me.
(That said, there WAS a large newspaper article about three months ago in a weekend version of the ‘Dom Post’ about the legal restrictions around reporting suicides as, er, suicides. I STILL don’t understand how not talking about a problem makes it go away.
THAT said, there was also a ‘Dom Post’ news piece last month about the lessening in the suicide rate, with the authorities stating outright ‘it’s good that the suicide rate is down, but we have no idea why it’s down’).
As far as getting someone to come forward, I honestly feel there’s a bag of mixed messages.
‘Yellow Ribbon’ (ill-fated due to accounting scandals?) campaigns exhort people to come forward/confess/submit themselves, but I believe that’s a very difficult thing to do.
it’s always very difficult to come forwards. Friends and co-workers are often not receptive or understanding (or outright hostile or dismissive, in my personal experience). Anti-depressant medication is not necessarily the answer – it can potentially lead to a raft of whole other side effects and issues (again, in my experience). Someone’s demographic, gender, sexual orientation and income can be counted against them (as if mental health was open to political value judgements – sorry, that was a bit self-serving and bitter).
Uhm, I guess my point is that there’s a lot of factors to overcome before someone in a VERY fragile state of mind can feel comfortable coming forward and asking for help.
Sorry for rambling. Won’t happen again.
Blair, that is not rambling, that is a valuable contribution by a dude who is, as it happens, a dude. (Not as in the dude vs. dudette distinction, but as in the dude vs. lamer distinction. Natch.)