Suicides above 30,000 for 13th year
Joblessness, family troubles increasingly cited as causes
Kyodo News
Suicides eased to 31,690 last year but stayed above the 30,000 mark for the 13th year running, meaning an average of nearly 90 people took their lives each day, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
While the rate is down 3.5 percent from 2009, the number who killed themselves because they couldn't find a job jumped 19.8 percent to 424.
Suicides triggered by family troubles also surged, climbing 9.2 percent to 4,497 compared with 2009.
The NPA said it will step up efforts to offer counseling and other services because the persistently high suicide rate is apparently linked to a "deep freeze" in the job market, as well as to the weakening of interpersonal relationships in society.
The number of suicides caused by reasons that could be deduced from notes and other materials left behind totaled 23,572, with the bulk of the deaths (15,802) laid to mental and physical health problems, followed by economic reasons (7,438).
A total of 1,207 people killed themselves over strained relations with spouses, while 575 did so because of poor ties with parents or children. Another 157 committed suicide over worries about how to raise children and 317 due to exhaustion from caring for relatives or others requiring nursing care.
Suicides caused by economic reasons, however, fell 11.2 percent, indicating that debts, personal bankruptcies and other financial distress caused by the global financial crisis that erupted in autumn 2008 might have eased a bit as the economy began to recover, the agency said.
But it also said the enforcement of more stringent regulations on loan-sharking was another reason for the drop in finance-related suicides.
I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this vast woodland whose name, in part, translates as "Sea of Trees."
挿入写真Remnants: Shoes for a man, a woman and a child left in the Aokigahara Jukai forest on the flank of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture. The name in part translates as "Sea of Trees," though with good reason it is often referred to as "Suicide Forest." ROB GILHOOLY PHOTOS
挿入写真Rites of remembrance: At a point overlooking a section of the 30-sq.-km Aokigahara Jukai forest, Buddhist priest Showzen Yamashita offers prayers for the untold number of people who have entered that "Sea of Trees" wilderness but failed to make it out alive.
Inexplicably, I find myself moving toward the sound, searching for signs of life. Instead, I find death.
The source of that scream remains a mystery as, across a clearing, I see what looks like a pile of clothes. But as I approach, it becomes apparent it's more than just clothes I've spotted.
In a small hollow, just below a tree, and curled up like a baby on a thick bed of dead leaves, lies a man, his thinning gray hair matted across his balding cranium. His pasty upper torso is shirtless, while his legs are covered only by black long johns — with blue-striped boxers sticking out above the waistband — and a pair of woolly socks.
Under his bent legs a pair of slacks, a white shirt and a jacket have been spread out as a cushion at his final resting place. Scattered around are innumerable documents, a briefcase and other remnants of a former life. Nearer to him are items more closely related to his demise: empty packets of prescription pills, beer cans, and bottles of liquor.
Seemingly this man, who looks to be in his mid-50s, had drawn his last breath before I heard that unsourced, chilling cry.
That I came across a body in this forest was a shock, but not a surprise. For half a century, thousands of life-weary Japanese have made one-way trips to this sprawling, 30-sq.-km tract of woodland in Yamanashi Prefecture on the northwest flank of 3,776-meter Mount Fuji, the nation's highest peak. It's a dark place of stark beauty, long associated with demons in Japanese mythology — and one that has earned itself the unfortunate appellation of "Suicide Forest."
Evidence of such pilgrimages is strewn amid the dense undergrowth. Four pairs of moss-covered shoes are lined up on the gnarled roots of a tree — two adult-size pairs and two children's pairs.
挿入写真Signs of life and death : Tape left following sweeps of the forest.
Further on there's an envelope of photos, one showing a young man, another two small children dressed in colorful kimonos and elementary school uniform. Together with the photos there's a typed note "To Hide" (most likey the name of a man), including the final stanza of "Song of the Open Road," Walt Whitman's poem from 1900 that ends with the line: "Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"
1-2
Nobody can know exactly how that line was answered — there was no sign of life, no sign of human remains. Local police suggest wild animals often get to corpses before they do, so clouding the issue of exactly how many achieve their goal and end it all here.
Nonetheless, bodies are frequently discovered in monthly sweeps coordinated by the police and local volunteer firemen. As they move around the forest, these searchers leave color-coded plastic tapes strung between trees to mark where they have searched and where they have found items or bodies — or sometimes simply to mark their way back out of this sylvan maze.
Altogether, police records show that 247 people made suicide attempts in the forest in 2010 — 54 of them successfully.
Local officials and residents believe that number could be significantly higher.
"There are people who come here to end their lives in Aokigahara Jukai but, uncertain as to where exactly the forest is, kill themselves in neighboring woodland," said Masamichi Watanabe, chief of the Fujigoko Fire Department that covers this area. Even so, his officers still recover an annual average of 100 people from the forest in various states of consciousness — including an increasing number who tried to take their lives by inhaling toxic gas in their cars, either from the exhaust or charcoal-burners they bring with them.
"What is certain, though, is that the numbers continue to rise each year," Watanabe added.
挿入写真A necktie noose (hanging and drug overdoses are the most common means of suicide there)
This is also the case nationwide. In January, a National Police Agency (NPA) report indicated that 31,690 people committed suicide in 2010, the 13th consecutive year in which the figures topped 30,000. In fact, according to World Health Organization data, the suicide rate in Japan is 25.8 per 100,000 people — the highest among developed nations, and more than double that of the United States.
Experts are quick to point out the impact of the global financial crisis, especially since the world's third-largest economy suffered its most severe contraction in over 30 years in 2009.
It is also believed that next year will see a further rise in suicides due to the magnitude-9 megaquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan on March 11. "It is likely to have a huge influence," said Yoshinori Cho, director of the psychiatry department at Teikyo University in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, and author of a book titled "Hito wa naze Jisatsu Suru no ka" ("Why do People Commit Suicide?")
Already there have been several suicides by relatives of disaster victims, while the long-term effects of life in evacuation shelters may also lead to depression and thus, directly or indirectly, to further suicides, Cho added.
"It's not just regular depression, but also clinical depression due to the stress caused by the reality of their circumstances," he said. "Depression is a huge risk factor when it comes to suicide."
2-2
According to NPA reports, a major suicide trigger in 2010 was depression, and some 57 percent of all the suicide victims were out of work when they died. Among those, men in their 50s were most numerous, though men in their 30s and 40s has been the demographic showing the biggest percentage increase in the past few years.
挿入写真Local anti-suicide patrollers out at night.
"This generation has a lot of difficulty finding permanent jobs, and instead people take on temp work that is unstable and causes great anxiety," said Yukio Saito, executive director of Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline), a volunteer telephone counseling service that last year fielded nearly 70,000 calls from people contemplating suicide.
"Callers most frequently cite mental health and family problems as the reason for contemplating suicide," Saito said. "But behind that are other issues, such as financial problems or losing their job."
Although financial worries are undoubtedly major drivers of modern-day suicide, other unique cultural and historical factors also seem to play a part.
In some countries, suicide is illegal or at least largely unacceptable on religious or other moral grounds, but in Japan there is no such stigma.
"Throughout Japanese history, suicide has never been prohibited on religious or moral grounds," said Cho. "Also, apart from on two specific occasions in the Meiji Era (1868-1912), suicide has never been declared illegal." Lifeline's Saito concurred, saying: "Suicide is quite permissible in Japanese society, something honorable that is even glorified."
The tradition of honorable suicide dates back centuries to Japan's feudal era, when samurai warriors would commit seppuku (ritual disemboweling) as a way to uphold their honor rather than fall into the hands of an enemy.
The present-day acceptance of suicide stems from this, Cho said. "Vestiges of the seppuku culture can be seen today in the way suicide is viewed as a way of taking responsibility," he observed.
Japan is also subject to suicide fads, and Seicho Matsumoto's 1961 novel "Nami no To" ("Tower of Waves") started a trend for love-vexed couples, and then jobless people, to commit suicide in the Aokigahara Jukai.
The book, which this year posts its 50th anniversary, concludes with its beautiful heroine, who is involved in a socially unacceptable relationship, heading into the forest to end her life.
In fact that suicide trend in the forest peaked in 2004, when Yamanashi prefectural police figures show 108 people killed themselves there.
In recent years, local authorities have implemented measures to try and reduce that toll, including siting security cameras at the main entrances to the forest and carrying out round-the-clock patrols.
挿入写真A figure bound to a tree where someone took their own life.
At the entrances there are also signs that read: "Think carefully about your children, your family." Below them is the phone number of a volunteer group headed by lawyers specializing in debt advice, as debt is a common suicide trigger.
The signs were erected by 38-year-old Toyoki Yoshida, who himself attempted suicide due to debt. He blames Japan's money-lending system, which the government has now reformed to a degree.
"As things stood," Yoshida said, "major banks would provide loans to loan sharks at 2 percent interest, and then the lsharks would loan to people like me at 29.2 percent. But despite the reform, it's still not hard to amass crippling debts in this country."
Vigilant shopkeepers also play a role in the prevention effort. Hideo Watanabe, 64, whose lakeside cafe faces an entrance to the forest, said that he has saved around 160 people over the past 30 years.
"Most people who come to this area for pleasure do so in groups," he said. "So, if I see someone on their own, I will go and talk to them. After a few basic questions, it's usually not so difficult to tell which ones might be here on a suicide mission."
On one occasion, he said a young woman who had tried to kill herself walked past his store. "She had tried to hang herself and failed. She had part of the rope around her neck and her eyes were almost popping out of their sockets. I took her inside, made her some tea, and called an ambulance. A few kind words can go a long way."
Showzen Yamashita, a priest who conducts Buddhist rites in the forest to pray for the repose of the thousands of people who have died there over the years, agreed, adding that the lack of support networks in Japan is a main cause of the ever-increasing suicide rate.
"They have no one to talk to, no one to share the pain, the suffering," he said. "So they think, 'If I take my life I can escape this misery.' We conduct these rites in order to ponder how we might help make a world that is free of such suffering."
Rob Gilhooly's photo-story "Suicide Forest" was awarded a special prize by jury in the 2011 Days Japan International Photojournalism Awards and an honorary mention in the OnAsia International Photojournalism Awards for 2010.
終わり
アメリカの尊厳死。現在３州（ワシントン/オレゴン/モンタナ）が法的に医者の処方薬を許している。
Peter Goodwin: The Dying Doctor’s Last Interview
By Belinda Luscombe |March 14, 2012 |
Dr. Peter Goodwin, a family physician and right-to-die activist, took his own life on March 11, 2012, at age 83. He did it legally, with the blessing of his family and doctors, under the Oregon law allowing physician-assisted suicide — the first such law in the country — that Goodwin was instrumental in creating.
Dr. Goodwin granted TIME his last interview, four days before he died. (The full interview will be available online on Thursday and in print on Friday.) He did not look like a dying man; he was chirpy and alert and still had a mischievous twinkle in his eye. However, as a result of his fatal disease — a Parkinsons-like condition called coritcobasal degeneration — he could not use his right hand or do much reliably with his left. Walking was difficult for him and stairs were particularly treacherous. He did not want to die, but death was coming anyway, and he did not want to wait.
“I can no longer eat in public,” Goodwin said. “My balance is gradually deteriorating. My three doctors agree that I’m within six months of dying. My attending physician has given me a prescription for medication to end my life and I have had it filled.”
In Oregon, doctors may not administer injections to end a life, but they are allowed to write prescriptions for lethal drugs for mentally competent people who are able to take the medication without help and have less than six months to live. And yes, the prescriptions are covered by health insurance.
Dr. Goodwin took his life on Sunday not because he could not bear to live any more nor because he was in incredible pain, but because he wanted to die among family. He timed his death so that his four children and their spouses could be there, including his younger son, who is a Navy pilot in Korea. During our interview, he wept several times at the thought of no longer being involved in their lives.
Ever the activist — Goodwin was brought up in South Africa and his cousin was a defendant in the Rivonia trial alongside Nelson Mandela — the doctor wanted to make his death mean something. The moral question of whether doctors should be allowed to enable terminally ill people to kill themselves is not yet settled in the U.S. Currently physician-assisted suicide is permitted only in Oregon, Washington and Montana.
Oregon voters approved the Death With Dignity Act at the polls in 1994; it was enacted three years later, after they voted down legislation that would have repealed it. To date, 597 people have died under its provisions. Goodwin, who has himself helped three patients die under the legislation — and one patient even before the Death with Dignity Law — has fought tirelessly to change people’s attitudes about death, right up until his own.
Goodwin gave lectures and interviews as long as he was able about the importance of advance directives at the end of life as well as open and frank discussion with loved ones. He wanted the end of life to be as gentle as possible and within the patient’s control. He was also a big advocate of allowing dying people to receive hospice care early, rather than letting doctors continually try to cure them. “Physicians are taught to treat, and they often go on treating and treating and treating,” he said. “It’s very, very difficult because they have so much in their armamentarium — so many new ways of treating cancer, so many new ways of treating heart disease — it’s very difficult for physicians to give up.”
Goodwin passed, it seems, just as he wanted to: half an hour after taking the lethal dose of medication his doctor prescribed for him and surrounded by his children.
フェイスブックで自殺中継-台湾の女性
Woman's Facebook friends don't call for help as she commits suicide
The Taiwanese woman kills herself on her 31st birthday, posting photographs as her room fills with fumes.
Associated Press March 27, 2012, 2:55 p.m.
TAIPEI, Taiwan— A woman in Taiwan killed herself by inhaling poisonous fumes while chatting with friends on Facebook, and none of them alerted authorities, police said Tuesday.
Claire Lin killed herself on her 31st birthday, March 18, and family members who reported her suicide were unaware of the Facebook conversations that accompanied it, Taipei police officer Hsieh Ku-ming said.
Lin's last Facebook entries show her chatting with nine friends, alerting them to her gradual asphyxiation. One picture uploaded from her mobile phone depicts a charcoal barbecue burning next to two stuffed animals. Another shows the room filled with fumes.
One friend identified as Chung Hsin, told Lin, "Be calm, open the window, put out the charcoal fire, please, I beg you."
Lin replied: "The fumes are suffocating. They fill my eyes with tears. Don't write me anymore."
A few of the Facebook friends chatting with her tried to stop her and track her down on their own, but none called police. Chung did not respond to attempts to reach him for comment.
Lin's last words, in Chinese, were: "Too late. My room is filled with fumes. I just posted another picture. Even while I'm dying, I still want FB (Facebook). Must be FB poison. Haha."
Lin's Facebook postings indicated she was unhappy because her boyfriend was ignoring her, and had failed to return home to be with her on her birthday. Her boyfriend found her body the next morning and alerted her family, Hsieh said.
Hsieh said he regretted that none of her friends called police to help her during the 67-minute episode, but he added it may have been difficult for them to know her whereabouts because of the nature of social media.
"It could be true that it would be hard to track down a Facebook friend without her address or phone contact," Hsieh said.
Chai Ben-rei, a sociologist at Taiwan's Feng Chia University, said the incident reflected social isolation in the Internet age.
"People may have doubts about what they see on the Internet because of its virtual nature, and fail to take action on it," he said.
In a statement, Facebook said the company is deeply saddened by Lin's death and that the case serves as a "painful reminder of how people can help others who are in distress or need assistance."
Facebook's help page has links to suicide prevention hotlines in about 20 countries, including Taiwan, where the Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center's phone number and website are listed.
In the case of an emergency, however, Facebook urges users to call authorities immediately.
ベビーブーム世代の尊厳死殺人−アメリカの場合
Ohio hospital shooting: Mercy killing or murder?
Aug 12, 5:48 PM EDT
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN and JOHN SEEWER Associated Press
CLEVELAND (AP) -- John Wise watched a tear roll down his wife's face as he stood alongside her bed in the intensive care unit. She'd been unable to speak after suffering a stroke and seemed to be blinking to acknowledge him, Wise confided to a friend who had driven him to the hospital.
The couple had been married 45 years and Wise told his friend that they had agreed long ago they didn't want to live out their years bedridden and disabled.
So a week after Barbara Wise's stroke, investigators say, her husband fired a single round into her head. She died the next day, leading prosecutors to charge the 66-year-old man with aggravated murder Wednesday in what police suspect was a mercy killing.
The shooting leaves authorities in a dilemma some experts say will happen with greater frequency as the baby boom generation ages - what is the appropriate punishment when a relative kills a loved one to end their suffering?
More often than not, a husband who kills an ailing wife never goes to trial and lands a plea deal with a sentence that carries no more than a few years in prison, research has shown. In some instances, there are no charges.
"It's a tragedy all around that the law really isn't designed to address," said Mike Benza, who teaches law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
A New York man in March was sentenced to six months in jail after suffocating his 98-year-old disabled mother and slitting his own wrists. He told authorities he had just been told he had cancer and believed he was going to die soon, and feared no one would care for his mom. A Washington state man accused of shooting his terminally ill wife this year told investigators she had begged him to kill her; he is free on bail while prosecutors weigh charges.
Almost always, there are deeper issues involved with the accused, including depression, their own health problems and the stress of taking care of a dying spouse, said Donna Cohen, head of the Violence and Injury Prevention Program at the University of South Florida.
Seeing a dying or disabled spouse suffering can be enough to push someone over the edge, said Cohen, who is writing a book called "Caregivers Who Kill."
"Men will hit a wall when they can't do anything else," she said. "That's usually a trigger."
She worries this will happen more often with longer life expectancies and a continuing shortage of mental health services for older people.
In the early 2000s, testifying a Florida legislative committee, Cohen cited research showing that two in five homicide-suicides in the state involved people 55 and older. The number of cases grew among older people while staying the same with those under 55.
1-2
Police say Wise took a taxi from his home in Massillon, calmly walked into his 65-year-old wife's room on Aug. 4 at Akron General Medical Center without drawing any attention, and shot her.
Juries are often sympathetic to those who kill a spouse out of what is portrayed to be love and compassion, but the message that sends is unclear, said Wesley J. Smith, a California lawyer who wrote a 2006 book "Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and the New Duty to Die."
"Where's the stopping point?" he said. "There almost comes to become a cultural acceptance that certain people are better off dead than alive."
Those who kill a loved one to end the suffering are acting out of their interests, he said. "We're really putting Grandpa out of our misery," Smith said.
Wise's lawyer has said that he was a good man who was devoted to his wife.
"I am absolutely confident that everything that he's ever done for his wife has been done out of deep love, including the events that just recently transpired," said attorney Paul Adamson.
The former welder also suffered from nerve damage that made his hands and feet numb, survived bladder cancer and had diabetes, said Terry Henderson, a 30-year steel plant co-worker.
Those issues could help his case if it goes to trial. "The facts surrounding her death are sympathetic and may actually foster a plea before trial," said Jeff Laybourne, a prominent Akron defense attorney.
But just because his wife may have been suffering isn't a valid defense under the law, Laybourne said.
Other factors that could determine whether the case goes to trial include the timing of the shooting and that it happened in such a public place.
Henderson thinks Wise may have snapped under the weight of both of their health concerns. "He never dreamed, given his history of medical problems, that this would happen to her before he'd go," Henderson said.
That kind of situation can be deeply depressing for a person dependent on the care of a spouse who suddenly is disabled, said Dr. Peter DeGolia, a physician specializing in care for the aging at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland.
"If this man was dependent on his wife for care and basic well-being, and suddenly she's gone, he's going to feel very vulnerable, highly at risk," he said. "Older white males are the highest risk group for carrying out suicide plans."
It's a scenario that DeGolia said can be defused with help from social workers and hospice care for the dying.
"There are lots of options," he said, "aside from going and shooting them."
----
Seewer reported from Toledo.
2-2
Hollywood filmmaker Tony Scott jumps to death
LOS ANGELES | Mon Aug 20, 2012 12:47am EDT
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood filmmaker Tony Scott, director of such big-screen action hits as "Top Gun" and "Crimson Tide," jumped to his death on Sunday from a bridge over Los Angeles Harbor, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said.
Scott, who was 68, was seen parking his car on the Vincent Thomas Bridge and jumping into the water below at about 12:30 p.m. local time, and his body was recovered by law enforcement from the harbor shortly before 3 p.m., said Lieutenant Joe Bale, a watch commander for the coroner's office.
Bale said there was no immediate evidence leading investigators to believe that Scott's death was anything but a suicide. He said an autopsy had not yet been performed.
(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
精神科医が語るうつ病による自殺者への思い。
Psychiatrist: I hate suicide but also understand it
By Charles Raison, Special to CNN
11:40 AM EDT, Tue August 21, 2012
(CNN) -- I got a terrible shock when I heard the news that the famous director Tony Scott had apparently committed suicide by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, California.
Not because I knew Scott, and certainly not because it is a rare thing for people who seem to "have it all" nonetheless to kill themselves.
No, I got a shock because I knew the bridge.
For the better part of a decade, I trained and then worked as a psychiatrist in Los Angeles. For several of those years, I did psychotherapy with a young woman who drove over that same bridge every day. The bridge became almost a third person in our work together, because she talked about it constantly.
Every morning and then again every evening she faced huge anxiety as she approached its yawning span because it was all she could do not to stop her car and throw herself off it. Just seeing that bridge made all her pain and despair intensify, and it came to represent everything that was wrong with her life.
On the other hand, it's a beautiful structure, in an industrial sort of way, and it also seemed beautiful to her because it was always there, silently waiting, always offering an easy out. When things were really bad, she'd drive 20 miles out of her way just to avoid that bridge and the terrible temptation to jump or crash her car off the side.
Fortunately, my patient avoided Scott's fate. She came to grips with a history of abuse and her depression eased. She married and left Los Angeles. I also left Los Angeles, but a few years ago, I returned to the San Pedro area to give a talk and crossed that bridge with a mixture of relief and distress.
It is that strange mixture of relief and distress that characterizes many of the responses to Scott's apparent suicide that have been posted on CNN.com.
Many comments come from family members of people who have committed suicide, some defending the loved one's decision, others decrying it as the ultimate selfish act. Although I've spent my life battling suicide, I find myself empathizing with both points of view.
Perhaps the first thing to say about suicide is that people make suicide attempts for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes people want to die, or half want to die.
But just as often in my experience, suicide attempts are a cry for help, or a way to punish people they are upset with, or a means of controlling a situation. I've known more than a few married people who kept a husband or wife from walking out on them, at least for a while, by making a suicide gesture.
On the other hand, people really only kill themselves for three reasons.
Occasionally people will commit suicide because they are facing some incurable condition that promises a brief future filled with nothing but pain.
Although many mental health clinicians will disagree vociferously with me, I have seen suicides that I felt were in this sense justified. For example, I knew a grand old fellow who, in the midst of unbearable physical pain from inoperable cancer, took his life when he had a life expectancy of two to three months.
1-3
Occasionally people will commit suicide because they are psychotic and believe they must die for some reason that makes no sense to anyone else. I had a patient once who made a very serious suicide attempt because she believed that if she died, the mysterious private investigators who were stalking her would leave her family alone.
These types of suicides are heartbreaking, because they are so futile and can often be prevented by appropriate treatment.
The vast majority of people who choose methods of suicide that are almost guaranteed to succeed -- like a gun to the head or a plunge from a high bridge -- do so because of they are losing a battle against major depression. These are the suicides that haunt and hurt worst of all, and that almost to a person are the most tragic.
I hate suicide.
I've been fortunate that suicide does not run in my family. But it runs in lots and lots of families and I've known -- and known of -- more people who have killed themselves than I can easily count.
There was the shy kid who shot himself in high school, the young punk who drove his car off a particularly bad curve, the wonderful hard-working father of the class valedictorian, and various in-laws across a couple of marriages.
And those are just people from my personal life. Like any psychiatrist who deals with the severely mentally ill, my life is littered with memories of folks who threw themselves off high buildings, hanged themselves in dark closets or slit their throats in dusky gardens.
But as much as I hate suicide, I also understand it. One of the things people have repeatedly posted in comments responding to Scott's death is that you can't weigh in on why someone might commit suicide unless you've really had your life torn apart by an episode of major depression.
I agree.
Severe major depression is probably the most unbearable pain a human being can withstand for any protracted period of time. Many people who died of cancer have written eloquently about how the crushing pain from their tumors paled in comparison to the pain they felt when depressed.
With all other pain, most people can maintain some sense of separation between themselves and the pain. As horrible as it is, the pain is in their arm, or leg, or belly or head. But there is still a "them" that is separate from the misery.
Depression is different. Because it is at its essence a perceptual disorder, it causes one to see the entire world as pain. It feels painful inside, but it also feels painful outside.
When a person is depressed, the entire world is disturbed and distressed, so there is nowhere to escape. And it is this fact that makes suicide so seductive, because it seems to offer the one available escape option.
There are at least two reasons why suicide in response to major depression is so horrible and so tragic. First, although our treatments for depression are far from perfect, they are nonetheless effective enough to help the vast majority of depressed people feel well enough to forgo killing themselves.
2-3
And even when treatment is not particularly effective, depression often passes on its own accord. It is not an incurable cancer that offers a guaranteed foreshortened future of unbearable pain. Because of this, depressed people kill themselves over something that would have lifted had they just been able to hang in there.
The other reason depression-driven suicides are so tragic and terrible is because they cast such long shadows on families and other loved ones.
Children especially suffer. They grow up wondering why, and whether they could have done something, and whether they'll have to struggle with the same urges.
I think of people I have known in this situation, and I have to think of something else to keep from tearing up as I write this. More than once I've "guilted" acutely suicidal patients into not killing themselves for the sake of their children and have done so with a clear conscience.
We may or may never know why Scott apparently killed himself, but we can be sure that his family and friends will spend many years wondering what they might have done to have protected him. This is part of the painful legacy left by suicide, and my heart goes out to them.
In fact, even psychiatrists have a difficult time predicting when someone is at heightened risk for suicide. In part, this comes from the fact that many people who really want to kill themselves keep their mouths shut about it and just go do it. In part, it comes from the fact that suicide is often an impulsive act driven by acute and unpredictable increases in anxiety and despair that one cannot predict in advance.
For families and friends worried about the suicidal potential of a loved one, there are a few useful pieces of advice I can offer from the research literature, such as it is.
First, older men are more likely by far than other people to kill themselves.
Second, people who kill themselves often will tell someone ahead of time. Any such communications should be taken with utmost seriousness, and all efforts should be made to keep the person safe and get him or her to appropriate treatment immediately.
Third, even over the suicidal person's objections, the means for committing suicide should be removed from the environment. Guns should be taken out of the house. Pain pills should be taken elsewhere.
Fourth, studies conducted over the last 20 years suggest that the biggest short-term risk for depressed people to kill themselves is the development of unbearable anxiety. If a loved one with depression begins to pace the floors or do other things suggesting that they are becoming consumed with terror, panic or dread, the risk for suicide shoots up.
Finally, it is not true that talking about suicide increases the likelihood it will happen. In fact, studies suggest the opposite.
So if you have a loved one with depression who is struggling with the will to live, one of the best things you can do -- over and above getting them immediate health care -- is to check in with them regularly and honestly and act if their drive to die intensifies.
3-3
凡人もこの範疇に入る。
*****
上記への読者のコメント
Paul W
22minutes ago
I would like to posit to you an additional cause for suicide - chronic unworkability. Some people whose lives never work out, whose lives are metered by failure, breakdowns, mishaps, accidents, illness, loss, loneliness. People who cannot make or keep friends, who cannot find love or who find love and loses it repeatedly. People whose lives suffer an incessant string of improbable setbacks in their careers, relationships, health. When something has a 95% chance to succeed, but fail due to a chain of improbable 5% events.
If you call it luck, it's aberrational luck. But it's not obvious, it's not like a circus elephant falling from the sky on your dog, it's when a complete stranger who serves everybody else in explicably forgets you, or your cellphone running dry when you really need to reach someone and you do not have their phone number written down anywhere. It's a numbers game, it's by degrees, but it's pervasive.
And people have no grip on why that happens. There is nothing in Religion that explains it except for Job, but this Job-like existence is filled with mundane mishaps. Most people don't know about unworkability, and have no way of communicating it to others in their lives. How do you explain to your siblings who have families and successful careers that nothing ever seems to work without getting the inevitable pep talk about taking responsibility, working hard, getting your act together, dropping bad habits or basically - look at me, I have everything, I worked for it, you don't because you're too lazy (or fill in the bad habit).
I know this from personal experience. From a probablistic point of view, my life is full of improbable mishaps and near misses, things tend to break down. I live with the pain, the dread of a life that has not worked out, and am starting into old age that offers very little to look forward to. But I recognize that my mishaps as aberrant, and plan for them. I spend a lot of time and energy proactively planning everything I do, and double-checking everything and too often finding a mishap waiting to spring had I not done so.
I had made a decision to not commit suicide, it also helps that though I think of it often, at core, I am not suicidal. But absolutely I understand it, and can only offer a partial relief that you can make your life at least marginally workable if you recognize the problem and what types of things typically go wrong beforehand. But I offer to you unworkability as a factor in people taking their lives.
Japan minister Matsushita found dead at home in possible suicide: police
Monday, Sep. 10, 2012 Japan Times
Japanese financial services minister Tadahiro Matsushita was found dead at his residence in Tokyo on Monday, police said, adding they suspect the country's top financial regulator committed suicide.
The police have yet to disclose details about the death of Matsushita, 73.
A member of the People's New Party, the coalition partner of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, Matsushita served concurrently as postal privatization minister.
Matsushita was a five-term member of the House of Representatives from Kagoshima Prefecture.
カナダのケース
Teen who posted video on bullying found dead
By CHARMAINE NORONHA
Oct 12, 11:37 PM EDT Associated Press
TORONTO (AP) -- Canada was in uproar Friday over a 15-year-old schoolgirl who was found dead, an apparent suicide, five weeks after she uploaded a video to YouTube describing years of bullying that drove her to drugs and alcohol.
Coroner Barb McLintock said Thursday night that preliminary indications suggest the British Columbia girl, Amanda Todd, killed herself. Her school district's spokeswoman, Cheryl Quinton, confirmed the girl in the video was her.
In the 9-minute video posted on Sept. 7, the 10th-grader and cheerleader didn't speak but told her story in haunting detail in a series of handwritten notes that she held up to the camera.
She said she was lured by a stranger to expose her breasts on a webcam and the picture ended up on a Facebook page made by the stranger, to which her friends were added.
She wrote of being plunged into anxiety, depression, drugs and alcohol. She said she changed schools but an encounter with another girl's boyfriend started the bullying again, which this time escalated into a physical attack in which she said she was beaten.
When she got home, she wrote, she drank bleach. "It killed me inside and I thought I actually was going to die."
She was rushed to a hospital to flush out the bleach. More anxiety, cutting and overdosing followed, her struggles with anxiety and cutting herself got worse, and despite counseling and antidepressants, she was rushed to hospital again after an overdose.
The last cards said simply: "I have nobody. I need someone. My name is Amanda Todd."
Beneath the video, Todd posted a note saying she produced it not for attention, but "to be an inspiration and to show that I can be strong."
"Everyone's future will be bright one day, you just gotta pull through. I'm still here, aren't I?"
Coroner McClintock said she died in her home Wednesday. Her office released no other details.
Her family could not be reached by phone. The Coquitlam Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the family is not prepared to speak publicly and have asked that their privacy be respected.
The girl's death was headline news nationally Friday, with (hash)RIPAmanda trending across Twitter and the Amanda Michelle Todd memorial Facebook page garnering more than 30,000 "likes."
Cyber-bullying experts and criminologists suggested laws be strengthened to allow police to trace cyber bullies through the Internet.
British Premier Christy Clark posted a video on YouTube deploring the tragedy. Bullying "isn't a rite of passage," she said. "Bullying has to stop."
The British Columbia gym where Amanda was a cheerleader posted a statement on its Facebook page.
"I ask that we all watch her video and share her story so that her loss is not in vain," the statement read. "Allow this to be her legacy. Allow us to all look around and find the next Amanda before another precious spunky teenager is lost."
Shock, sadness and recriminations poured out on a Facebook page devoted to her, with one signatory accusing others of having participated in the bullying.
Irena Pochop, communications manager for the Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows school district east of Vancouver, confirmed Amanda was enrolled in the district and had changed schools this year.
She would not address the girl's specific case but said the district had a detailed system in place to protect victims.
A story from usa:
Ashley A. Riggitano- NY Fashionista Jumped from George Washington Bridge
February 7, 2013 By Jen
Jewelry designer and fashionista Ashley A. Riggitano killed herself yesterday by jumping from the George Washington Bridge. Several witnesses watched in horror as she plunged into the Hudson River.
She placed her handbag on a walkway at around 4:40 p.m. before leaping from a point midway at the Jersey-bound lanes of the upper level, authorities said. Her body was pulled out by the harbor patrol shortly after she jumped.
The beautiful and young 22-year-old left her Louis Vuitton bag containing a “suicide diary” that included a list of five girls she did not want to attend her funeral, sources said.
The Post reports that authorities found “pages of handwritten notes that described Riggitano’s torment and that singled out the five people. ‘All my other “friends” are in it for gossip,’ she wrote. ‘Never there.’ According to the notes, it appears Riggitano was bullied by her fashion friends. She also directed her rage at a man who she said hadn’t treated her well. That person was invited to the funeral, but Ashley wrote she hopes he ‘gets what he deserves’ when he gets there.”
Ashley Anne Riggitano was born on February 6, 1991, and lived in Paramus, New Jersey. She was a recent graduate of the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising in Manhattan and had been interning at jewelry designer Alex Woo. She had also interned at some high-profile fashion companies including Tommy Hilfiger and Nicole Miller, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Recently Riggitano had started her own jewelry business, Missfits, with friend Victoria Van Thunen (picture below).
“We met in school during a standardized test. This grew into an immediate bond over our anguish at having to spend so much time on the Jersey side of the Hudson. As time went by, we found that our obsessions ran parallel and we began Missfits. Our pieces reflect our addiction to fashion (why couldn’t Alexander McQueen have designed NYC subways? We could all have been travelling to work in a pseudo-Wonderland by now) and passion for cultural trends.”
The Daily Mail reports that Van Thunen wrote on Facebook yesterday:
“Those who incessantly blame others as the cause of their issues should perhaps take a step back and reevaluate these situations. The common thread may be that “they” aren’t the problem, but rather that YOU are.”
Authorities also reportedly found Adderall and Klonopin. Adderall is used for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or narcolepsy while Klonopin, is used to control seizures in epilepsy and for the treatment of panic disorder. The Post says that Riggitano had tried to commit suicide last year.
Her family, reached at home in Paramus, N.J., would not comment on the tragic incident.
New York Manhattan mother jumps eight stories to her death with her infant son strapped to her chest; baby survives with minor injuries
Sources say Harlem lawyer Cynthia Wachenheim penned a 13-page, handwritten suicide note before jumping out of an eighth-story window, taking her son, Keston, with her. The baby was saved from the impact when the woman landed on her back on the pavement.
By Rocco Parascandola , Joe Kemp AND Vera Chinese / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 4:46 PM
Updated: Thursday, March 14, 2013, 8:11 AM
.
A Manhattan lawyer strapped her 10-month-old son to her chest and leaped to her death from an eighth-story window in Harlem on Wednesday — and the baby miraculously survived with little more than scratches, police sources said.
Cynthia Wachenheim, 44, who left a suicide note castigating herself for being a bad mother, landed on her back after taking the fatal plunge. Baby Keston was in a harness. He bounced off his mom on impact and then rolled away from her motionless arms.
“I heard a small scream when she was in the air,” said witness Steven Dominguez, 18. “I noticed something falling, but I didn’t want to believe it was a person.”
Dominguez, who teared up as he spoke, said the landing made a horrifying sound.
“It was a loud bang,” he said outside the woman’s building on Bradhurst Ave. near W. 147th St. “It sounded like a big piece of wood hitting the floor.”
“When I got closer, I saw the baby crying,” he said.
Cynthia Wachenheim and her 10-month-old son Keston plummeted eight stories from a Harlem building near W. 147th St. The baby was in stable condition Wednesday night at Harlem Hospital, hours after his mother’s 3:30 p.m. jump.
Sources said Wachenheim left a rambling 13-page, handwritten suicide note on small pages of notebook paper.
“The note said she was not happy and she talked about what she planned to do,” a source said. In the note, Wachenheim is “saying to her husband, ‘I love you. I’m making you suffer. You’re going to think I’m evil,’” a source said.
“She thinks she’s a failing mother. On the last page, she refers to postpartum depression. She was supposed to see a therapist, but she blew him off.
“As the note goes on, you get the idea she’s explaining why she’s going to do it,” the source added.
The note, which mentions little Keston having a physical handicap, was unsigned — but cops compared it to handwriting samples and determined that it was written by Wachenheim, the source said.
Wachenheim died, but her son Keston survived with minor injuries. He was in stable condition at Harlem Hospital. Police learned — not from the note — that Wachenheim was convinced her baby had cerebral palsy, although doctors said there was nothing wrong with him, said the source.
Wachenheim’s husband, Hal Bacharach, 48, was at work when his wife jumped, the source said. He was spotted on surveillance video leaving the upscale building at 12:55 p.m., less than three hours before the leap. Neighbors said he stormed out of their two-bedroom condo after a loud argument. Shouting echoed through the halls.
1-2
“He was yelling at her today,” said Christian Johnson, 37. “It made me stop and listen. He was asking her why she wouldn’t pick up the phone. He kept repeating it. Then, the baby started crying.”
A police source said Wachenheim was taking antidepressants and that pills were found in the apartment.
A different police source said Wednesday was the first time police were ever called to the apartment. The couple had lived at The Sutton — where similar apartments run about $325,000 — for about three years.
Wachenheim, a high school valedictorian in Albany and a Columbia Law grad, was on maternity leave from her $118,000-a-year job in the city court system. She worked there for more than 15 years doing research and writing for judges.
Wachenheim, whose lifeless body lay on the street covered with a whire sheet, wrote a 13-page suicide note where she talked about not being happy and what she planned to do, a source said. She also said in the note to her husband that she loved him and was making him 'suffer.' “She was wonderful — very devoted to the court (and) wonderful with everyone she worked with,” said her boss, John Werner, chief court clerk. “It’s a tragedy.”
“We are deeply saddened by this tragic incident,” said David Bookstaver, spokesman for the city’s Office of Court Administration. “Our thoughts are with her family.”
Two NYPD narcotics detectives were parking a car nearby and were the first to respond after they saw the tragic fall.
Cops took the boy, who appeared to only have scratches and minor injuries, to Harlem Hospital. He was listed in stable condition and was expected to survive. A source said he underwent a CT scan.
Neighbors were shocked that Wachenheim, who officials said worked as an associate court attorney with the New York County Law Office, took her only child with her in the fatal leap.
“She was very friendly,” said Yaa Dwamena, 32. “She always greeted you when you came in and out of the building. She didn’t seem like she was going through anything.”
Neighbor Christian Johnson said he heard Wachenheim and her husband, Hal Bacharach, yelling at each other, but didn’t think it was anything more than a typical squabble until he saw Wachenheim dead. A building worker described Wachenheim as a devoted mom.
“She was always holding him in her arms,” the worker said. “She was always with the baby. She loved that baby.”
Johnson, who has known the couple since they moved into the building, said he never saw signs of trouble.
“I saw her a little while ago,” he said. “She seemed stressed out — but what mother of a 10-month-old isn’t stressed out?”
Johnson also thought that Wednesday’s argument was just a typical squabble between parents, until he saw Wachenheim’s body on the sidewalk.
“I saw her on the ground and I lost it,” Johnson said.
With Barbara Ross, Kerry Burke and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
2-2
Indiana girl’s public suicide and heartbreaking note sparks anti-bullying legislation in the state
Angel Green hanged herself and left a note to her mother that said, ‘It’s bullying that killed me. Please get justice.’
By Sasha Goldstein / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, April 4, 2013, 5:07 PM
Angel Green in happier times. The 14-year-old hanged herself outside and left and heartbreaking suicide note pointing her finger at bullying as her cause of death.=pic
By the bus stop, they found their Angel hanging from a tree.
On her bed at home, for her stricken mother to find, the 14-year-old Indiana girl left a note that read, in part, “Why did I deserve this pain?”
The heartbreaking suicide last month of West Lafayette’s Angel Green has now led to anti-bullying legislation at the state’s capital.
Green was an 8th-grader, who hanged herself March 5. The note she left behind — penned in a careful hand and addressed to her classmates — pointed clearly to the growing menace of bullying.
Indiana mother Danielle Green took her daughter’s plea “to get justice” straight to the legislature. =Pic
“Have you ever thought about what you said to me? huh... maybe not! because you killed me everyday,” she wrote, leaving the note beside her bed for her mother.
“P.S.,” the note ends, “it’s bullying that killed me. Please get justice.”
The girl’s devastated mother, Danielle Green, took her daughter’s plea straight to the state legislature.
Angel Green’s suicide note points the finger at bullying to which she was subjected. =pic
She’s pushing for passage of House Bill 1423, targeted at making school’s accountable for bullying. It would require them to note and report such incidents in an annual report, WRTV-TV reported.
The bill would further require training for all school staff and employees on bullying prevention. Any incident of bullying would be reported to the students and their parents.
The bill has passed the state’s House and will go before the Senate for a vote.
Angel Green said her suicide was from bullying.=pic
"I want the schools to have more training and I want the kids and everybody to have support and resources for how to handle it," Green said as she visited the statehouse in support of the bill.
Such legislation, Green believes, could prevent further suicides. Her daughter had long been bullied by her classmates.
"They called her whore, slut and countless names, and told her she was worthless," Green said. "She did this before the bus was going to be there so her bullies would see her."
Green was joined Wednesday by other mothers, including Lana Swoape, who lost her daughter Tori, 15, to suicide in May.
In Angel Green’s case, still just a month after her death, her final note speaks volumes to the bullying she faced as a middle-school student.
“You told me so much that I started believing it,” she wrote on a piece of notebook paper. “And I was stupid for doing that. Every morning, day, night I look in the mirror and cry, and replay the harmful words in my head.”
Mom talks about why anti-bullying bill is importan...: Danielle Green's 14-year-old daughter killed herself on March 5, unable to endure continued bullying. Green hopes a bill advancing in Indiana's legislature will help other children.=video
INDIANAPOLIS - — Danielle Green didn’t cry Wednesday as she told lawmakers about how her teenage daughter, Angelina, killed herself on March 5 after two years of being bullied.
The tears welled, instead, when the Senate Education Committee voted 8-2 to approve an anti-bullying measure that better defines just what bullying is, and helps schools know how to identify it and react.
“My daughter’s story is now heard,” the West Lafayette mother said after the vote. “It gives my Angel wings.”
House Bill 1423 now goes to the full Senate for debate and a vote, which supporters hope sends it to Gov. Mike Pence to be signed into law.
The bill easily passed the House, 77-17, on Feb. 25 — when Angelina, 14, was still an eighth-grader at Battle Ground Middle School in West Lafayette.
The pictures Green brought with her to the Statehouse show a red-haired smiling girl. The story Green told, though, was of a child who hung herself after two years of being harassed.
Her hair. Her freckles. Her weight. All were targets of teasing by other children. And, perhaps worst of all, an assault by her father. After his arrest became public, the crime committed against her became just one more thing with which to taunt her.
Wednesday, after waiting more than four hours at the Statehouse for the Senate Education Committee to work its way to HB 1423, Green became the only one who had the chance to tell her story to the full committee.
With time growing short, and legislators beginning to leave, Chairman Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, urged supporters of the bill to cut their testimony short. While he pledged to stay and hear personally everyone who wanted to share their stories, and show their pictures, Kruse warned them that if a vote wasn’t taken soon, there would no longer be a quorum to take a vote.
1-3
(Page 2 of 3)
Failure of the bill then would have meant it died in the Senate.
The group chose Green, who with a trembling and nervous voice that grew stronger as she spoke, told the lawmakers her daughter endured endless bullying in school that continued online after school.
“They called her names. They pushed her. They tripped her in school. They have thrown food and trash at her during school,” Green said.
Holding her daughter’s photo so the senators could look in her eyes, Green told them: “This could be any one of your children. She is just like anybody else. Beautiful. She’s intelligent. And now she’s gone.”
She didn’t tell the senators how her older daughter found Angelina missing on the morning of March 5. Or how she drove to look for her daughter, and discovered that someone had been found hanging from a tree. She didn’t describe how she kept telling herself her daughter would show up, all the time fearing that the body that police had found was Angelina.
Instead, she read to the senators the letter she found later.
“Dear eighth grade,” Angelina wrote. “To all the bullies that have called me names, (you) are the reason why I am feeling the way I am now. . . . I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to be saved from the pain.”
Green said she repeatedly talked to the school, but the seriousness of what was happening to her daughter was dismissed.
Wednesday, Sen. Pete Miller, the Avon Republican who sponsored HB 1423, told the committee that bullying is different now than it was when they were children.
This isn’t teasing, he said, and it isn’t something that schools can just brush off. Instead, Miller said, it is repeated humiliation that doesn’t end with the school day, but instead continues via the Internet, cellphones and social media.
A law passed in 2005, he said, is insufficient. It is too vague on just what is bullying, with inconsistent application of the law from district to district.
Under the bill approved Wednesday, bullying is defined as overt, repeated acts or gestures — made in any manner, whether verbally or electronically — that create for the targeted student a hostile school environment that places the student in reasonable fear of harm, has a substantially detrimental effect on his or her physical or mental health, and substantially interferes with the student’s academic performance or ability to participate in or benefit from the school’s services and activities.
(Page 3 of 3)
In addition, the bill lays out procedures for schools, including provisions for anonymous reporting of bullying incidents; timetables to report incidents to parents, school officials and, if necessary, law enforcement; and discipline procedures for schools that fail to investigate and also for false reporting of bullying.
The bill, which applies only to traditional public schools, also requires schools to provide training for its employees on bullying, and requires schools to give age-appropriate lessons on bullying prevention for all students in grades one through 12 by Oct. 15 of each school year.
James Todd, a retired Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department sergeant, told senators he worked in the department’s education unit, spending time in every school system in Marion County.
“Bullying was a problem in every system that we worked in,” Todd said. “Some districts tried to deal with it directly. And some just let it go until it erupted into violence.
“I wish that we had had House Bill 1423 in those days,” Todd said, saying it would have given schools a clear definition of bullying while requiring administrators to confront bullying as a serious impediment to education.
“There has been much talk lately about making our schools safe,” Todd said, referring to efforts in Indiana and other states to deal with the threat of gun violence. “Talk is cheap. This bill in its original form would actually help create safer schools.”
Todd referred to “its original form” because supporters Wednesday were alarmed that an amendment, offered by Kruse and backed by conservative activists, would render the bill meaningless.
Tracie Wells, director of Bully Safe Indiana, said, in fact, that supporters might rather see the bill die than become law with changes that would water down the definition of bullying and the provisions that spell out how schools must respond.
Wednesday, no one testified against the bill. But former Marion County Prosecutor Scott Newman, who was among those who helped draft the bill using language that already is law in 35 other states, said conservative groups expressed concerns that it infringed on First Amendment rights of free speech and religion.
Newman said the concerns were unfounded.
“It was such a modest bill that identifies bullying problems and allows for prevention and training,” Newman said. “That’s it. But people decided to take that on, and they said their concerns are the First Amendment.”
To combat those fears, the supporters had their own amendment drafted, spelling out that nothing in the anti-bullying language interferes with participation in religious events, or the exercising of First Amendment rights.
The committee adopted that amendment, while rejecting the one, offered by Kruse, that supporters felt would have diluted the bill.
Newman said his world changed the day of the Columbine High School killings 14 years ago.
“I realized the whole bullying phenomenon . . . was much more lethal than anything I was used to,” he said.
Newman said he began looking more deeply into what was happening in the schools, and how they were responding.
We're all going to die and we all know it. This can be both a burden and a blessing.
Julie Beck May 28, 2015 the Atlantic
In the heart of every parent lives the tightly coiled nightmare that his child will die. It might spring at logical times―when a toddler runs into the street, say―or it might sneak up in quieter moments. The fear is a helpful evolutionary motivation for parents to protect their children, but it's haunting nonetheless.
The ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus advised parents to indulge that fear. “What harm is it, just when you are kissing your little child, to say: Tomorrow you will die?” he wrote in his Discourses.
Some might say Epictetus was an asshole. William Irvine thinks he was on to something.
“The Stoics had the insight that the prospect of death can actually make our lives much happier than they would otherwise be,” he says. “You’re supposed to allow yourself to have a flickering thought that someday you’re going to die, and someday the people you love are going to die. I’ve tried it, and it’s incredibly powerful. Well, I am a 21st-century practicing Stoic.”
He’s a little late to the party. Stoicism as a school of philosophy rose to prominence in the 3rd century B.C. in Greece, then migrated to the Roman Empire, and hung around there through the reign of emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180 A.D. “That Stoicism has seen better days is obvious,” Irvine, a professor of philosophy at Wright State University, writes in his book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. He stumbled across the philosophy when researching a book on Zen Buddhism―“I thought I wanted to be a Zen Buddhist,” he says, “but Stoicism just had a much more rational approach.”
Though the word “stoic” in modern parlance is associated with a lack of feeling, in his book, Irvine argues that the philosophy offers a recipe for happiness, in part by thinking about bad things that might happen to you. The big one, obviously, is death―both yours and that of people you love.
“We can do it on a daily basis, simply by imagining how things can be worse than they are,” he says. “Then when they aren’t that way, isn’t that just wonderful? Isn’t it simply wonderful that I get another day to get this right?”
For Irvine and the Stoics, thoughts of death inspire gratitude. For many others, thinking about The End inspires fear or anxiety. In fact, the latter may be the natural human condition.
* * *
“We are different from other animals in that we are uniquely aware of our own mortality,” says Ken Vail, an assistant professor of psychology at Cleveland State University. “Certainly other animals recognize they can die―if a cheetah chases an impala, or chases us, both us and the impala are going to run away. We recognize that as an immediate threat of mortality. But the impala doesn’t sit in the safety of its office aware of the fact that it will eventually die. And we do.”
This is the price we pay for the nice things consciousness has given us―self-reflection, art, engineering, long-term planning, cooking our food and adding spices to it instead of just chomping raw meat straight off the bones of another animal, etc. We’re all going to die and we all know it.
But we’re not always actively thinking about it. When people are reminded of death, they employ a variety of strategies to cope―not all of which are as well-adjusted as Stoic gratitude. That many kinds of human behavior stem from a fear of death is the basis of one of the most prominent theories in modern social psychology―terror-management theory.
It’s the hope of symbolic immortality that calms the frightened rabbits of death-fearing hearts―the idea that people are a part of something that will last longer than they do.
1-6
Terror-management theory exists because one day, some 30-odd years ago, Sheldon Solomon was perusing the library at Skidmore College, where he’s a professor of psychology, and he happened to pick up The Birth and Death of Meaning, by Ernest Becker. “This is nothing to be proud of, but the cover is white with green splotches on it, and I was like ‘Ooh, what an interesting color,’” Solomon says. “Then I liked that it was a short book with big print. Again, nothing to be proud of, but true. And that’s why I reached for it.”
Once he opened the book, though, Solomon was taken by its central question―Why do people do what they do?―and how it was presented, without “turgid academic jargon,” he says. Becker offered an answer to that question: People do a lot of the things that they do to quell their fear of death. So Solomon and two of his friends from grad school, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, set out to test that idea empirically.
* * *
The only antidote to death is immortality. And so, terror-management theory holds, when faced with the idea of death, people turn to things they believe will give them immortality, literal or otherwise. The hope of true immortality can be found in religion’s promises of heaven or reincarnation, or in some of science’s more dubious life-extension promises (Just freeze your dead body! They’ll wake it up later!).
More often though, it’s the hope of symbolic immortality that calms the frightened rabbits of death-fearing hearts―the idea that people are a part of something that will last longer than they do. Their culture, their country, their family, their work. When thinking of death, people cling more intensely to the institutions they're a part of, and the worldviews they hold.
What that actually means in terms of behavior, is trickier. The research shows that what people do when they’re feeling aware of their mortality depends on the person, the situation she’s in, and whether she’s focusing on death or it’s just in the back of her mind. (The TMT literature, which details a wide range of effects, is now fairly substantial. A 2010 metareview found 238 TMT studies, and this page on the University of Missouri website lists nearly 600, though it doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012).
When death is in the front of your mind―when you pass by a cemetery, when someone you know is sick (or when, in a lab, a researcher has just asked you about it)―the tendency, according to TMT, is to want to push those thoughts away. You might suppress the thoughts, distract yourself with something else, or comfort yourself with the idea that your death is a long way away, and anyway, you’re definitely going to go to the gym tomorrow.
A couple of studies have shown that conscious thoughts of death do increase health intentions, for exercise and medical screenings, though whether people actually follow through on those intentions is unclear. Promising yourself you’ll eat better may just be a strategy to get death off your mind.
When death is on people’s conscious minds, “they can wield logic to deal with it,” Vail says. “This would be similar to your mom saying, ‘Put on your seatbelt, you don’t want to die.’ So you think about that and recognize, yes, she’s right, you don’t want to bite it on the way to the grocery store, so you put on your seatbelt.”
According to Solomon, even young children use versions of these same strategies. His new book, written with Greenberg and Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life, cites the story of 5-year-old Richard, from a series of interviews the psychologist Sylvia Anthony conducted in the 60s and 70s:
2-6
“He swam up and down in his bath [and] he played with the possibility of never dying: ‘I don’t want to be dead, ever; I don’t want to die.’ … After his mother told 5-year-old Richard that he wouldn’t die for a long time, the little boy smiled and said, ‘That’s all right. I’ve been worried, and now I can get happy.’ Then he said he would like to dream about ‘going shopping and buying things.’”
Classic distraction move, Richard. Though at times, our own coping mechanisms may not be much more sophisticated. “Americans are arguably the best in the world at burying existential anxieties under a mound of French fries and a trip to Walmart to save a nickel on a lemon and a flamethrower,” Solomon says.
But shopping excursions can only distract you so much. Even once you stop actively thinking about it, death is still prominent in your nonconscious mind. “One metaphor is the file drawer,” Vail says. “You pull out a file and read it, then you get distracted, now you’re thinking about dinner. You put [the file] back in the drawer, you pull out dinner, now you’re looking it dinner, but whatever you were thinking about previously is now on the top of the file. It’s the closest thing to your conscious awareness.”
This is when, the research shows, people's attitudes and behaviors are most affected―when you’ve recently been reminded of death, but it’s moved to the back of your mind.
Unfortunately, a lot of what death brings out when it's sitting at the top of the file drawer is not humanity’s most sterling qualities. If people feel motivated to uphold their own cultures and worldviews in the face of death, it stands to reason that they might be less friendly toward other worldviews and the people who hold them.
“Americans are the best in the world at burying existential anxieties under a mound of French fries and a trip to Walmart to save a nickel on a lemon and a flamethrower.”
The very first terror-management study involved “22 municipal-court judges in Tucson, Arizona,” according to The Worm at the Core. The judges were tasked with setting bail for alleged prostitutes, but first they were asked to take a survey. Some of them just answered personality questions, but some were also asked two questions about death: “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you,” and “Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you physically die, and once you are physically dead.” The standard bail at the time was $50, set by judges who didn’t take the survey. The ones who did take the survey set the bail an average of nine times higher.
“The results showed that the judges who thought about their own mortality reacted by trying to do the right thing as prescribed by their culture,” the book reads. “Accordingly, they upheld the law more vigorously than their colleagues who were not reminded of death.”
3-6
But, Solomon says, the researchers later repeated that study with students, and found that only those who thought prostitution was “morally reprehensible” opted to set a harsher bail. The logic goes that those students wanted to uphold their values, and punish transgressors. Since then, more studies have shown this tendency: When mortality's on their minds, people prefer others in their (cultural/racial/national/religious) group to those outside it. This dynamic has manifested in silly ways―in one study liberals were more likely to make conservatives eat a gross hot sauce after a death reminder and vice versa―and in more serious ones―reminders of mortality have been shown to make people more likely to stereotype others.
While wanting to promote your own worldviews can mean putting others' down, that isn't the only way people seek to feel like part of something greater than themselves―searching for that symbolic immortality. Looming mortality can also lead people to help others, donate to charity, and want to invest in caring families and relationships. (And studies have backed up that people do these things when reminded of death.)
These reactions have also been observed outside the lab, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when death was likely top of mind for many Americans for quite a while. Comparisons of survey answers before and two months after 9/11 found increases in kindness, love, hope, spirituality, gratitude, leadership, and teamwork, which persisted (though to a slightly lesser degree) 10 months after the attacks. But Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski point out in their book that there was also a lot of fear and derogation by Americans of the “other” after 9/11, specifically Muslim and Arab others.
“It’s not the case that awareness of mortality and the ensuing terror-management process is an inherently negative one that causes prejudice and closed-mindedness and hostility but instead it appears to be simply rather a neutral process,” Vail says. “It’s one that motivates people to indiscriminately uphold and defend their cultural worldviews.”
How you manage your terror, then, depends on what’s already important to you―and that’s what you’ll turn to when confronted with mortality. In one study, empathetic people were more likely to forgive transgressions after a death reminder; in another, fundamentalist religious people were more compassionate after thinking of their own mortality―but only when compassionate values were framed in a religious context, such as excerpts from the Bible or Koran.
* * *
Terror-management theory contends that there’s something different about our fear of death, compared to other fears. Every other threat is survivable, after all. And in research, thinking about death has produced just as strong of an effect whether the alternative was something neutral, or another threat like rejection or pain. So a fear of death is not just like a fear of rejection, except more.
Except Steven Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, doesn’t think death is necessarily such a unique threat. In 2006, he and fellow researchers Travis Proulx and Kathleen Vohs developed the Meaning Maintenance Model, which says yes, thinking about death can inspire these attitudes and behaviors, but for a different reason. Death, according to their theory, is a threat to the way we understand the world, similar to uncertainty, being rejected by a friend, or even―Heine’s example―finding a red queen of spades in a deck of cards. All these things interrupt what Heine calls “meaning frameworks―understandings of how the world works. When we think about the fact that we’re going to die, it calls all of those assumptions into question. All these things I’m trying to do, I won’t be able to succeed, my relationships will be severed, the way I think I fit into the world, ultimately I no longer will. This is bothersome.”
4-6
But perhaps not more bothersome than other threats to meaning. Heine says Meaning Maintenance Model studies have found that thinking about death does not have a noticeably larger effect on people's attitudes and behaviors than, say, watching a surreal movie. A metareview of TMT studies also notes that the effects of thinking about death are less significant when compared with thinking about something else that threatens someone's sense of meaning.
Thoughts of death still lead people to uphold their worldviews according to this theory, but it’s because, when faced with an idea as confounding as one's own mortality, people turn to the other things in their lives that still make sense to them. While the two theories have a lot in common, Heine says MMM can explain one thing that TMT cannot: suicide.
“TMT would argue that while we want to have a sense of meaning as a way of keeping away thoughts of death, one of the key motivators of suicide is feeling that your life isn’t very meaningful, wanting death when you feel like you don’t have sufficient meaning in your life," he says.
The thing that makes death different, Heine says, is that it’s not solvable. With other meaning threats, you can try to fix the problem, or adjust your worldview to accommodate the new information. “The fact that we’re going to die is a problem that we can never fully resolve throughout our lives,” he says.
But maybe that’s for the best.
* * *
“I know we’re supposed to be super afraid of death. But it’s good, isn’t it?” asks Laura King, curator’s professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri, Columbia. “If life never ended, think about it, right? Isn’t that like every vampire story or sci-fi movie? If you live too long, after a while, you just lose it. Life no longer has any meaning, because it’s commonplace.”
King did a study in 2009 that offers an alternative, economical perspective on death and meaning. She showed that after reminders of death, people valued life more highly―and conversely, reading a passage that placed a high monetary value on the human body increased people’s number of death thoughts. This is the scarcity principle, plain and simple―the less you have of something, the more you value it.
But “most of us don’t live like we’re aware that life is a finite commodity,” King says. She describes an exercise she has her students do, in which they write down their life goals, and then write what they’d do if they only had three weeks to live. “Then you say, ‘Why aren’t you doing those things?’ They say, ‘Get real, hello, we have a future to plan for.’”
“Everybody always says life is too short, but it's really long. It's really, really long.”
“Live every day as though it’s your last” is nice but profoundly unhelpful advice, when you know that today is probably not your last day. I’m not sure what I’d do if I was going to die tomorrow―round up all my loved ones and fly them to Paris? Or maybe just throw them a really nice dinner party, the kind where everyone ends up sprawled out on couches, overstuffed and warm from the wine.
5-7
Either way, I can’t do that today. I have to go to work.
“Everybody always says life is too short,” King says, “but it’s really long. It’s really, really long.”
Once people’s days truly are numbered, their priorities do seem to shift. According to research done on socioemotional selectivity theory, older people are more present-oriented than younger people, and are more selective in who they spend time with, sticking mostly with family and old, close friends. Other studies have shown them to also be more forgiving, and to care more for others, and less about enhancing themselves.
This all fits in well with Irvine’s Stoic philosophy. Rather than pulling curtains over the darkness on the other side of the window, you stare straight into it, so when you turn away you’re thankful for the light.
Irvine gives the mundane example of buying a lawn mower. “As I’m doing it, I have the realization that this is conceivably the last lawn mower I will ever buy,” he says. “I don’t like mowing the lawn, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve only got X number of times it’s going to happen. Some day, this moment, right now, is going to count as the good old days."
* * *
Unfortunately, Western culture isn’t exactly death-friendly. Death is kept largely out of sight, out of mind, the details left to hospitals and funeral parlors. Though most Americans say they want to die at home, few actually do―only about 25 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most other people die in hospitals, nursing homes, or other facilities.
This is why, in 2011, the mortician Caitlin Doughty founded The Order of the Good Death, a self-described “group of funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists exploring ways to prepare a death-phobic culture for inevitable mortality.” She’s also written a book about working in a crematory, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and hosts the “Ask a Mortician” webseries.
“Death doesn't go away just because we hide it,” Doughty wrote to me in an email. “Hiding life's truths doesn't mean they disappear. It means they are forced into darker parts of our consciousness … Death is the most natural thing in the world, and treating it as deviant isn't doing our culture any favors … We don't control nature. We aren't higher-ranking than nature.”
This is terror management writ large, a culture that pushes death away as best it can. Even though, ultimately, it can’t.
More people are coming around to Doughty’s way of thinking. “Death salons” and “death cafes,” where people gather to talk about their mortality have sprung up across the U.S., and many doctors, like the Being Mortal author Atul Gawande, are working to advance the conversation around end-of-life care, getting patients involved in planning for their deaths.
6-7
But the research shows the effects of thinking about death aren't all grace and gratitude ―so would bringing death out into the open ultimately help or hurt humanity?
“At first, thinking about death regularly made me move up and down and way up and way down the emotional spectrum,” Doughty writes. “But over time thinking about death moves you closer to magnanimity. You realize that you will have to give your body, your atoms and molecules, back to the universe when you're done with them.”
She also points out that TMT studies are isolated instances, and don't look at what happens when people think about death regularly, over time.
Maybe the key, then, is being deliberate. Not letting thoughts of death sneak up on you, but actively engaging with them, even if it’s hard. In one 2010 study, people who were more mindful were less defensive of their worldviews after being reminded of death, suggesting that “mindfulness can potentially disrupt some of these kinds of processes that go into terror management,” says Vail, the Cleveland State University psychologist.
Solomon, too, is hopeful. “I like to think there comes a moment where sustained efforts to come to terms with death pay off.” Vail suggests that freeing oneself from the psychological reactions to death might get rid of the good effects along with the bad, but Solomon’s willing to take the trade. “If you look at the problems that currently befall humanity―we can’t get along with each other, we’re pissing on the environment, [there’s] rampant economic instability by virtue of mindless conspicuous consumption―they’re all malignant manifestations of death anxiety running amok.”
It’s probably not possible to erase all fear of death―animals have a drive to survive, and we are animals, even with all that consciousness. Even if being mindful about death means getting rid of the good along with the bad consequences of death anxiety, people can be generous and love each other without being scared into it.
"Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him," E.M. Forster once wrote. I don't know if there's really any salvation, but if we accept death, maybe we can just live.
About the Author:
Julie Beck is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic, where she oversees the Health Channel.
7-7
