When the Great Recession was in its infancy, late in 2008, there was speculation on the impact of the economic downturn on health. Many stories featured the studies of economist Christopher Ruhm, who claimed health improves during economic hard times. What his statistics actually showed was that fewer people died, perhaps due to fewer automobile accidents. That’s not quite the same as improved health.
Though I never found Ruhm’s reasoning very convincing, there was one statistic that made sense. Of the ten causes of death Ruhm had tracked, the only one that didn’t fall with economic hardship was suicide.
Number of Japanese suicides exceeds 30,000 for 12th straight year
Statistics for suicide in the US are not yet available for 2009, but they’ve just been released for Japan, a country where suicide is a significant social problem. As Japanese sociologist Kayoko Ueno writes: “Suicide rates are increasing at such high speed in Japan that it has made scholars wonder if the proper name for the phenomenon is suicide or social murder.”
Here are the 2009 numbers for Japan. For comparison, the number of suicides in the US per 100,000 people was 11.6 in 2007.
• For people in their 20s, the number is 24.1, an all-time high (“Young people are having difficulties in finding the meaning of life,” according to a representative of a suicide prevention organization).
• For those in their 30s, the number is 26.2.
• For those in their 40s to 60s, the number is over 30.
These numbers are for both men and women. The statistics for men only are much higher.
Prior to 1998, the number of annual suicides had ranged between 15,000 and 25,000. Suicides peaked in 2003 at 34,427, but the number has remained over 30,000 for the past 12 years. The total for 2009 is 32,845.
Is it the economy or is it something about Japanese society?
2009 was a year of worldwide economic collapse, but it was especially hard on Japan. Real GDP (gross domestic product) had its largest decline (5.2%) since tracking began in 1955.
This year’s report on suicides from the Japanese National Police Agency is quick to point out correlations between suicides and economic events. For example, annual suicides in Japan first exceeded 30,000 in 1998, a year of wrenching bankruptcies and growing unemployment. The report notes that a sharp increase in Japanese suicides in October 2008 followed the collapse of the financial firm Lehman Brothers. The peak in monthly suicide rates in March, April, and May of 2009 are attributed to “fiscal-end fund demands [that] apparently picked up during the period.”
There’s no doubt that financial conditions contribute to many suicides in Japan. The number of suicides attributed to losing a job increased 65.3% compared to the previous year. Those attributed to hardships in life increased 34.3%. But some Japanese observers believe the government prefers to blame the economy because it is unable to acknowledge deeper problems in modern Japanese society.
Preventing traffic accidents takes priority
One can get a sense of Japanese opinion by reading comments on the recent news of 2009 suicide statistics, such as those following an article in Japan Today.
Many commenters cite the role of life insurance in Japan. According to sociologist Masahiro Yamada:
For an unemployed, former “salaryman,” suicide can be “a rational decision,” Yamada says. When a man commits suicide in Japan, his beneficiaries can still collect his life insurance. And insurers pay off Japanese home mortgages when a family’s breadwinner dies — even if the death is a suicide. “If he dies, the rest of the family gets money,” Yamada says. “If he continues to live without a job, they will lose the house.”
However, the overall sense one gets from reading the comments is that people feel the government would like to blame suicide on world economic problems (the collapse of Lehman Brothers) while doing very little to address the real underlying issues. For example, this comment:
Japanese government has largely shied away from investing in effective suicide-prevention measures. In sharp contrast to its suicide policy, the state has spent billions of yen on road-safety measures to reduce the death toll from traffic accidents. Consequently, while all Japanese prefectures have highly sophisticated road-safety procedures, many lack comprehensive suicide prevention networks. Over four times more people took their own lives compared to those killed on the roads.
The government lacks political will
There’s a long and thoughtful article on the subject of Japanese suicide in Asia Times. It acknowledges both the economic and cultural issues.
Some of the dominant economic factors that have contributed to the current suicide crisis include large-scale bankruptcies, increased unemployment, a sluggish business climate, accumulated debts, lower incomes, inadequate bankruptcy laws, prolonged economic stagnation, an unregulated financial loan market and corporate restructuring. …
Some cultural factors exacerbate the problem: lack of religious prohibition against suicide, reluctance to discuss mental health and stress-related problems, a literary tradition that romanticizes suicide, a view of suicide as an honorable act, a way of taking responsibility for failure, among other issues. The breakdown of family and social networks and the increasing isolation of individuals contribute to the problem. …
Many people believe the government lacks the political will to tackle the socially sensitive issue, a situation that has allowed suicide rates to soar. The long economic downturn, changing socio-economic trends and various cultural factors combine to transform society, creating a less stable and more suicide-prone environment.
Suicide hotline numbers for Japan
Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service):
Japan: 0120-738-556 Tokyo: 3264 4343
US National Suicide Hotlines:
1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)
TTY: 1-800-799-4TTY (1-800-799-4889)
More phone numbers for the US at Suicide and Crisis Hotlines
Continued in Suicide in Japan (part 2): The Internet and media coverage.
Related posts:
Suicide in Japan (part 2): The Internet and media coverage
Links of interest: Suicide
Shutting out the sun: The essential foreignness of another culture
An upside to the downturn?
Sesame Street’s When Families Grieve
Links of interest: Funerals, cremations, wakes
Actions surrounding the moment of death are highly symbolic
A doctor assesses Michael Jackson’s cause of death
Health care: Reminding people of death triggers irrational emotions
Resources:
Photo source (Aokigahara forest): Suicide is not a remedy!
Number of suicides stays above 30,000 for 12th straight year, Japan Today, May 13, 2010
Eijiro Ueno, Japan’s Suicides Top 30,000 for 12th Year, Police Agency Says, BusinessWeek, May 13, 2010
J Sean Curtin, Suicide also rises in land of rising sun, Asia Times, July 28, 2004
Thank you for focusing on the unnecessarily high rate of suicide in Japan. I am a JSCCP clinical psychologist and JFP psychotherapist working in Japan for over 20 years. I would like to put forward a perspective on some of the main reasons behind the unacceptably high suicide numbers Japan and so will limit my comments to what I know about here in Japan
Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the reason for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan is due to unemployment, bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the fallout of the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.
The current worldwide recession is of course impacting Japan too, so unless the new administration initiates very proactive and well funded local and nationwide suicide prevention programs and other mental health care initiatives, including tackling the widespread problem of clinical depression suffered by so many of the general population, it is very difficult to foresee the previous government’s stated target to reduce the suicide rate to around 23,000 by the year 2016 as being achievable. On the contrary the numbers, and the human suffering and the depression and misery that the people who become part of these numbers, have to endure may well stay at the current levels that have persistently been the case here for the last ten years. It could even get worse unless even more is done to prevent this terrible loss of life.
Thank you so much for your comments, Andrew. I worked for a major Japanese corporation for many years and have traveled to Japan many times. So I am very fond of the country and its citizens. I was prompted to write this when a dear friend of mine from Japan was visiting me recently. As she was reading the news on her computer, I saw the report come up on last year’s suicide statistics.
As I mentioned, I’ve been reading Michael Zielenziger’s Shutting out the sun: how Japan created its own lost generation. He cites many Japanese experts on how to explain current psychological conditions in Japan, but I find I’m not totally satisfied with his analysis. I’m sure the explanation is much more complex, both as to why Japan has had such a difficult time recovering economically and why some Japanese citizens choose not to participate in society, whether it’s hikikomori, futoko, or suicide.
I only recently saw the film All About Lily Chou-Chou, which I thought was beautifully done. There have certainly been some egregious cases of bullying in the US, but Zielenziger argues that it’s especially cruel among Japanese adolescents.