Comment by vintermann
4 days ago
I'm sure some sociologists have written this already, but it seems to me that the people who commit suicide aren't those who are miserable and have few options. It's those who have lots and lots of options, but all options lead to unacceptably bad outcomes.
Microcredit in the third world is somewhat notorious for causing a rise in suicide rates. That fits the pattern: there's a huge number of things you can do to get money to pay back the loan, but if it gets out of hand, none of them get you remotely enough money to keep from sinking deeper into debt. Access to capital gives you many options - but it also makes it your fault when you didn't find the option which would lead you out of miserable poverty (which may not even exist!)
What any psychologist will probably tell you (at least, what all of them told me) is that clinical depression makes you bad at seeing options. Could it be that's in some sense a defense mechanism, trying to stop you from putting the really bad options on the table?
> I'm sure some sociologists have written this already, but it seems to me that the people who commit suicide aren't those who are miserable and have few options. It's those who have lots and lots of options, but all options lead to unacceptably bad outcomes.
People don't all commit suicide for the same reasons. Durkheim's book Suicide which in some ways created the idea of sociology itself categorizes four types of suicide.
Durkheim's classification works as a description, but doesn't seem very good to predict which groups will have high suicide rates. Suicide follows some very odd patterns. For instance
* Black Americans have low suicide rates, lower than white Americans, who in turn have lower than indigenous Americans.
* The children of actors and celebrities have high suicide rates.
* Men have higher suicide rates than women.
* Wealthier countries seem to generally have higher suicide rates than poorer countries, but inside a country the poor usually have higher suicide rate than the rich.
* People with schizophrenia have sky-high suicide rates
The only common thread I can think of is a sense of agency - which means thinking you have many options - with hopelessness. When you can do a lot (or at least you think you can, or society thinks you can), but none of it helps with the things that matter to you.
* Victims of racism may paradoxically be somewhat shielded from suicidal despair from low expectations. But when racism comes with heavy romanticizing (e.g. "noble savage", "ancient proud culture"), expectations are not low. Yet, it's all too understandable why someone would want internalize these romantic, often openly envied identities, even when they're completely at odds with their material situation. You can't live up to it yet you feel like it's all you have.
* Children of e.g. wealthy actors are materially very comfortable and safe, and clearly have lots of agency and choice - but what do they want, when they don't need to strive for wealth, any social acclaim they earn may be tainted by the suspicion that they didn't earn it fairly, and they in any case are unlikely to surpass their parents?
* One typical schizophrenia symptom is sense of agency disturbances. They often feel like they are in control of things they aren't, or don't have control of things which they do. The former, combined with seeing bad things happen (for instance on TV) can really devastate them.
I disagree suicide's primay driver is having lost the sense of purpose and your identity taken away from you !
Okay. Can you think of some groups which have a low sense of agency/few options, yet have a high suicide rate because of their lack of purpose and identity?
I'm looking for evidence against this theory, so I'm very interested if you can find it. But I think it's going to be hard, because they're going to be correlated: if you have a weak sense of self and purpose, then very likely your options will all seem bad too. And even if you have a strong sense of who you are and what your purpose is, failing to live up to the identity society and yourself assign to you (because all the options you have fail at living up to it) then you could well call that "having your identity taken away from your".
Opinions are great and all but do you have actual data to back it up ?