Monday 27 June 2016

Depression, Suicide, and the Modern World

According to this article Greenland is the country with the world's highest suicide rate. From 1900-1930 Greenland had a suicide rate of 0.3 per 100,000. Now it's a staggering 100 in 100,000 and is the highest in the world! Why such a huge increase? In the first half of the 20th Century they lived much as they had for the past 4000 years-- namely hunting and fishing and living in small villages. So perhaps something to do with the change in the way they live?

I suspect people are happier in small closely knit communities with a shared history and identity, where everyone knows each other, and where they do traditional work rather than doing repetitious work for some faceless company in the modern world. I would speculate the modern world, and the style of living it inaugurated, has some role to play in why so many people are depressed and commit suicide.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There was an episode of Vice this season on this:

https://news.vice.com/article/a-suicide-crisis-in-canadas-unforgiving-north

Basically it's because the natives were forced into integration with a Norwegian society that saw them as inferior and treated them like shit. When everyone treats you like shit and won't give you work, yeah, suicide might seem like a better option. Especially since science has discovered that dinosaurs still exist in the afterlife and you might be reincarnated as a Norwegian next time around!

Paul cockerill said...

Isn't it pitch black there 6 months of the year, that's probably the cause of depression and suicide.

Paul cockerill said...

Isn't it pitch black there 6 months of the year, that is probably the cause of the high suicide rate. There's more means to kill yourself nowadays then 100 years ago.

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