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The Forum > Article Comments > Suicide rates go up under conservative governments > Comments

Suicide rates go up under conservative governments : Comments

By Lyn Bender, published 24/9/2013

Not only has this been linked recently in the US to austerity measures but also to Australian and British statistics on suicide.

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Dear David G.,

<<Plundering is for barbarians, not for civilized, caring, thinking people!>>

Are there 'AND's and/or 'OR's between "civilized", "caring" and "thinking" in the above sentence? If so, where?

Are you suggesting that plundering is for native American Indians (uncivilised), public-servants (uncaring) and little children (unthinking)?

The Nazis were extremely civilised - hence they plundered.
The Soviets never stopped thinking and theorising - hence they plundered.
The Catholic Church constantly cared for people's souls - hence they plundered.

Truly, plundering is for the ignorant who fail to observe that when they take away the possessions of others, they in fact harm themselves more than they harm anyone else.

<<I too would like to live in a world where greed was a dirty word and war was banned completely and all weapons were destroyed.>>

In other words, a world where any possessions which people hold dear are confiscated/plundered (but they may keep such possessions which they do not value) and where anyone who attempts to wage war is drowned (no weapons, remember, only bare hands may be used).

That world can be a great source of bedtime stories for dirty little girls who are greedy for dolls - how their dolls are taken away from them and their hair pulled apart, and horrible boys who were found playing war-games and drowned in the toilet. Extremely educational!

Actually, if you like to live in a world like that, then why are you here? Did you happen to take a wrong turn? then what stops you from turning back (for example by committing suicide, or just holding your breath)?
Posted by Yuyutsu, Tuesday, 24 September 2013 12:51:33 PM
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"Studies of suicide rates under conservative governments compared to what I shall term, socially responsible governments, have shown that suicide rates go up under conservative governments."

The writer appears to ignore the fact that austerity measures need to be implemented because of the gross over-spending of socially irresponsible governments, e.g . Greek governments and much closer to home , Labor governments.

Consequently, rising suicide rates are traceable to socially irresponsible governments.
Posted by Raycom, Tuesday, 24 September 2013 4:39:22 PM
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I've heard this thesis before, but never bothered to check the statistics. It seems that for the last 22 years in Australia suicide rates have been higher under Labor than Liberal. http://www.mindframe-media.info/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/7961/Suicide-Figures.pdf Since 1999 highest under Hawke and Keating, more or less, then there was a peak when John Howard was elected which but quickly declines. It went up slightly under Rudd and seemed to come down a little under Gillard.

This list of suicide rates from Wikipedia is also interesting. Hard to see an ideological connection, but perhaps someone could take the time to plot the political complexions of the countries against their suicide rate and see whether there is a correlation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

Greenland has the highest rate, but I've no idea about their government. China, Russia and Cuba all have higher rates than the US. The "happiness capital of the world" Bhutan comes in at number 20.
Posted by GrahamY, Tuesday, 24 September 2013 5:37:54 PM
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As others have indicated above politicising suicide may not be that helpful. Individual psychologists have their own political views...

If the author is politicizing suicide in an effort to maintain public funding levels for suicide prevention this is laudable, but she should be forthcoming about this.

This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_suicide#Demographic_factors indicates that there are many reasons for suicide. Being depressed is probably the main and most immediate cause.

Austerity (that is across the board budget reductions) is effecting all types of government and may be more influential. Austerity leads to higher youth unemployment - with youths in their late teens-early twenties being a major group at risk of suicide.

If you look at suicide rates by country there appears to be no correlation between "conservative" governments and suicide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

Blaming suicide on conservative governments begs the question "what is a conservative government?". By Australian standards all US (and Japanese) governments are conservative including the current Obama Administration. China and Sweden are conservative in many respects but socialist in others.

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 24 September 2013 5:51:09 PM
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Not only do conservative governments pursue financial policies that favour the rich and screw the poor, they maintain a cultural mythology that persecutes vulnerability – financial, emotional and physical.

In conservative political terms, success and failure are viewed only as the inevitable outcome of taking individual responsibility for one’s choices. Even if it were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that suicide rates do increase under conservative governments, it’s unlikely to make any impact at all on conservative political policies, as they are too entrenched in the concept of human disposability.

Bren

'The UK and Greece ... In both of these cases recession was the inevitable result of years of over-spending and bloating of the public sector (especially in the case of Greece).'

Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Holland and Finland – all of whom have strong public sectors and social spending budgets – were nowhere near as negatively affected by the GFC as other EU states and the US.

Since the Thatcher era, the UK has pursued one of the most aggressive programs of social-spending cutbacks of any Western government. Greece, before its financial crisis struck, had the second-lowest social services budget in the EU and highest military spending (as well as a massive Olympics debt).

It was the collapse of the global financial markets, especially the bond market, that wrecked these economies by wiping out large portions of their government revenue.
Posted by Killarney, Tuesday, 24 September 2013 6:20:21 PM
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Dear Graham,

<<The "happiness capital of the world" Bhutan comes in at number 20.>>

No wonder: since the introduction of television in 1999, Bhutan is no longer the happy place it used to be for centuries. That device alone eroded happiness throughout the world, destroying family life and isolating individuals from each other and from nature.

Perhaps in other countries people already started to develop anti-bodies, or perhaps they were born with all that technology and never knew any better life, but for those who remember how life could be without all those flickering screens, life today is indeed depressing.

What a tragedy.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bhutan/perspectivesa.html
Posted by Yuyutsu, Tuesday, 24 September 2013 6:24:00 PM
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