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Unemployment Is Killing 45,000 People Each Year

February 13, 2015 / Klint Finley

Vice reports:

The number of suicides related to unemployment remains stubbornly high despite the improving economy, according to a study published this week.

Researchers had previously registered a spike in suicides during the global economic crisis that began in 2008, suggesting that financial stress and hardship had contributed to the rise. But an analysis published on Tuesday in The Lancet Psychiatry by doctors at the University of Zurich in Switzerland estimates that about 5,000 suicides were associated with the crisis, while roughly nine times as many self-inflicted deaths are linked to unemployment each year.

Full Story: Vice: Unemployment Is Killing 45,000 People Each Year

A Buddhist priest confronts Japan’s suicide culture

December 28, 2014 / Klint Finley

Here’s a long piece by Larissa MacFarquhar from the New Yorker last year about Ittetsu Nemoto , a Zen Buddhist priest who works with suicidal people and shut-ins known as “hikikomori.” Read the whole thing, but I found this letter a hikikomori wrote to Nemoto, included in the article, particularly interesting:

Long ago, becoming a training priest was recognized as a way of living, and I think that considerable numbers of the priests were people who had troubles that prevented them from living in society—people who would be called depressed or neurotic in today’s terms. . . . The basic rule was to leave the family and friends, discard all the relationships and renounce the world. . . . The old society accepted these training priests, although they were thought to be completely useless. Or rather, it treated them with respect, and supported them by giving offerings. . . . In very rare cases, some attained so-called “enlightenment,” and those people could spread teachings that could possibly save people in society who had troubles. In other words, there were certain cases where training priests could be useful to society, and I think that is why society supported them. . . . I think that training priests and hikikomori are quite similar. First, neither of them can fit in to this society—while the training priests are secluded in mountains, hikikomori are secluded in their rooms. They both engage in the activity of facing the root of their problems alone. . . . However, nobody accepts this way of living anymore, and that’s why hikikomori hide in their rooms. . . . But hikikomori are very important beings. Hikikomori cannot be cured by society; rather, it is society that has problems, and hikikomori may be able to solve them.

Full Story: The New Yorker: Last Call

Is the cult of positivity leading tech professionals to kill themselves?

October 6, 2014 / Klint Finley

Three years ago Zappos founder Tony Hsieh launched a ambitious project to transform downtown Las Vegas into a tech startup hub. It hasn’t exactly as planned. Nellie Bowles reports on a series of suicides by people involved in the project, and how the cult of positivity in the tech community may have contributed:

Hsieh seemed to work hard to keep each suicide quiet. Entrepreneurs told me there were few community resources made available, no large-scale gatherings, no cathartic outpouring, and that they felt confused about what was happening and why it was never addressed. Many in the Downtown Project, including a crisis counselor who worked with the parents of one entrepreneur, pointed to Hsieh’s philosophy — his obsession with happiness, and with imposing it upon the community — as one of the problems.

“Suicides happen anywhere. Look at the stats,” Hsieh said, sounding agitated, when I asked him about it one evening on folding chairs in the Learning Village, where speakers regularly come to lead sessions. “It’s harder for people who are really good students in school. Then they move in to this, where there is no instruction manual, and you have to be MacGyver on your own.”

My question appeared to make him uncomfortable. He scooted two seats away.

Full Story: Re/code: The Downtown Project Suicides: Can the Pursuit of Happiness Kill You?

The rest of the series looks interesting for anyone interested in cities and/or startups. (Wired did a big feature as well.)

See also:

Tech Has a Depression Problem

I’ve linked to stuff about the downsides of positive thinking often. Here are some highlights:

The benefits of pessemism

The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking

Smile or Die: Bright Sided as a 10 Minute Marker Board Cartoon

Over Half of Native Trans People Have Attempted Suicide

October 15, 2012 / Klint Finley

Depressing: The Advocate reports on a survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality. Among the findings: “Fifty-six percent (56%) of American Indian and Alaskan Native transgender respondents reported having attempted suicide compared to 41% of all study respondents.”

Full Story: The Advocate: Over Half of Native Trans People Have Attempted Suicide

Cyberculture History: Alan Turing Might Not Have Committed Suicide

June 23, 2012 / Klint Finley

The BBC Reports:

Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed.

At a conference in Oxford on Saturday, Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland will question the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest.

He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict.

Indeed, he argues, Turing’s death may equally probably have been an accident.

Full Story: BBC: Alan Turing: Inquest’s suicide verdict ‘not supportable’

He says none of this excuses the way Turing was treated in later life, he just argues that the investigation was handled poorly and the evidence to support the suicide theory are poor. Copeland argues that murder is another possibility.

When Microfinance Goes Wrong: Over 200 Microfinance Related Suicides in India

February 24, 2012 / Klint Finley

The AP reports that it has obtained internal documents that link SKS Microfinance to a rash of over 200 suicides in India. According to a report commissioned by SKS, the company’s employees had verbally and physically harassed borrowers, even going so far as to tell a borrower to commit suicide. One employee watched another borrow drink pesticide in a failed suicide attempt. Another blocked a women with a sick child from going to the hospital, demanding payment first.

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India

April 17, 2009 / Klint Finley

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago,” Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

“Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well.”

Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.

In another village nearby, Beturam Sahu, who owned two acres of land was among those who committed suicide. His crop is yet to be harvested, but his son Lakhnu left to take up a job as a manual labourer.

The Independent: 1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India

(via Cryptogon)

Are Engineers Doomed?

January 28, 2002 / Klintron

This site lists a number of famous engineers who have died by drug addiction, suicide, or murder. Kinda scarey- but it seems to me that there must be many many more engineers who died of natural causes or are still alive.

Doomed Engineers

(via Schism Matrix)

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