csteele

Statistics can be used to back any arguement however they are often totally misleading. How one is recorded as a suicide, whether the use of RU486 is recorded as an abortion etc etc. The vast majority of suicides appear to be as a result of a relationship breakup. Often it is a result of a young person feely rejected as secularism has led many to believe that their main use in life is their sexual attraction or performance. You are burying your head in the sand if you can't see that.

One under god:

...I agree entirely with your pronouncements. To call it an outrage, underscores the extent of the injustice of the state that “persecutes” the poor, by recalling a licence to drive a motor vehicle for non-payment of fines: Fines that result more often than not, from “out of context” issues unrelated to a drivers licence; for example, failure to vote.

...You so correctly describe the butchers’ picnic Australia has become, when a Government can randomly jail a citizen for filing information to “Centrelink”, when based on misdirected but best endeavours towards honesty, are treated as an act of criminal intent. Again the poor and the defenceless, the least able to defend themselves from this injustice, suffer these injustices without recourse or ability for rebuttal , as any possibility of access to lawyers to achieve justice, is confined to those resourced with the “means” to pay for that natural justice, from their own pockets.

...You, as usual OUG, hit the nail on the head with raw honesty, describing the circumstances under which life will often appear to be so unhelpful, making suicide justifiable; and nothing at all to do with “Mental Illness”. Or the constant oppression suffered from the increasing ranks of pensioners, forced by the plunder of heartless estate agents, to pay 70% of a pension for “ever” escalating rents, gouged for the “land lords” so revered by this Government, as the pillars of society, and trusted with the private enterprise function of housing the needy.

...But just a minute! Isn’t this the Government that prides itself on Human Rights? Bends over backwards and wails oceans of tears for the disposed of the world? Me-thinks a little more weeping for the disposed of Australia would make for a fine priority, and probably go a long way towards reducing suicide among our own citizens in times of dispossession, among the ever growing minority

i hate numbers games
i recall qld official figures once
where the numbers[per thousand]...said that 95 %..of nt
had been breathtested

completly insane...as the graph without the official numbers
looked just like all the other graphs..to wit year after year 95%..got a random breath test

accounting likely simply signed off on
the cost of bying...all them breath tests

but per 1000...is a huge scam
give the whole numbers..!

plus the individual local numbers
the sex numbers age etc..[and when they dont add up
we know its spin...

quote...""Luckily the Swiss keep excellent records..on abortions.""
does this include spotting...what term limit
is included in the OFFICIAL numbers..

[when is an abortion not just spontanious spotting
or the morning after pill?]

""Their rate is low and dropping.""
as would ours if it wasnt for the willing worker
/party loyalists..govt imports every year

""At its highest in 2001 it was 14.7% for every 1000 pregnacies.""

lol per thousand
what the whole number?

but lets call it 17*

""It has dropped by nearly 15% since then.""

ok so the number[17].. falls to less than 15*...more than 14

""This equates to 8.2 abortions per 1000 women"""

now we got a modicfier...NOTE...
""aged between 15 and 44""

""South Australia is the only state..with comparable records. Its rate of abortions per 1000 women in 2002 was 17.2, over DOUBLE that of Switzerland.""

WOMAN AGED BETWEEN 15 and 44?

what about child pregnancies
or older woman

cause it was best to go with the middle age group
cutting off the outliners?

stop running them [their models..
through computers and..point scoring spin machines/merchants

RAW NUMBERS..are...?
the topic is suicide

accidental death numbers are
road death numbers are
booze related death numbers are

well we all know what the numb-ers are
mindnumbing....for good reason..to stop reasoning

Great article. Widening human angst beyond “illness “ constructs and naming it "psychache" is something I will follow up on. As a survivor of over 40 years of mental health service responses I find the older I get, the more commonality I find with human suffering as a universal reality. Yeah to discussion beyond psychiatric capture. Thankyou David.

Contemplation of suicide a "crisis of the self" - I would have thought that was patently obvious. Why the hoohah then, as if this was something new, let alone an 'amazing discovery'? Yet, the author proclaims that this was an entirely new concept in 2006? And, was worthy of a PhD? Where was psychiatry then, and psychoanalysis, group therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy? Still only 'concepts'? Rubbish! An holistic approach to mental illness has been around for centuries.

Mental illness supposedly an 'inappropriate' or inaccurate descriptor? What shall we call the likes of depression then - soul-sick? And bi-polar - upsy-downsies? Or psychosis/schizophrenia/paranoia - outsies?

The author appears to put his money on any 'crisis of the self' being solely a conscious 'feeling' of unwellness (possibly including anger, self-doubt, confusion, distraction, lethargy, worthlessness ..), but discounts any associated alteration in neurlogical function or brain chemistry. This assertion is demonstrably totally erroneous. All changes in mental activity, including emotion, and particularly emotional stress, produce changes in brain function and brain chemistry. What does the author think dopamine, seratonin, etc are? Made up alchemy? Phlogistonic?

Is brain chemistry imbalance a reality? You bet. Can appropriate medication, such as anti-depressants and seratonin reuptake inhibitors, etc, be efficacious in restoring more normative brain chemistry, to the ultimate benefit of a patient? You bet.

Is a holistic approach to 'mental illness' the best approach, taking account of all causative and contributing factors? Naturally. So, what's new?

Stigmatisation is in the mind of the individual, not a societal prejudice, at least not generally in Aus. Could we do better in employment opportunities? Yes.

Forced detention and treatment detrimental? Maybe in some cases, but how many more suicides would there have been without it?

Are our public and private mental health services adequate? No where near!

David Webb,
It's a real pleasure to read your thoughts on this topic and I agree that mental illness has been a lucrative and heavily exploited market, and that Beyond Blue is nothing but a PR machine designed to patronise and normalise the "mentally ill"--withal its naive and well-intentioned spokespersons. But I don't think your criticism goes far enough, indeed that it's naive itself in the notion of a "crisis of the self"; it doesn't go far enough because it doesn't criticise the sick culture that cultivates all this "mental illness", and it's naive in that it doesn't premise its "crisis of the self" on its delusionary preoccupations. The only part of the self that's genuine is its a priori capacity for critical distance (the operating system--which is not to belittle it), the rest is derived from the host culture, and this ties in to the first part of my objection. Neither "Mental illness" nor its apotheosis in suicide is a subjective phenomenon; it's a "social" phenomenon. And I'm sorry to say that your position, apparently, of wanting to legitimise and empower the mentally ill does nothing to address the the originary problem or its propagation. Indeed you are only legitimising a pathological system by seeking its patronage.
You surely must see this? And so I can only assume you're promoting yet another form of passive identity politics.
I think suicide infinitely more respectable.