Like shark attacks, sometimes it only seems like there is a lot of suicide/death because something causes it to be noticed more.
When I was in high school, it seemed like an unusual number of people died. One person was trampled to death because the line to collect your school photos was unwisely placed in the middle of a already-crowded hallway. Someone else fell down the stairs and died at the hospital, and one kid who was in my German class died in a car wreck because he was reaching for something in the back seat.
Then I realized that millions of people die every day, many of them teenagers, all of whom go to high schools. By entering a high school I was only entering a larger statistical pool, increasing the odds that I’d be aware of deaths I otherwise wouldn’t. College is an even larger pool. Thousands of people, all near prime suicide age (not counting the elderly). It’s pure stats.
Kinda makes you feel insignificant… like you’re just a number in a pile… like it wouldn’t even make a difference if you just… just… watched cartoons.
With regard to suicide rates in Japan being “high.”
By taking the data from Wikipedia (and using Excel to sort it, because Wikipedia fails at doing so), we can determine that the top ten nations by suicide per capita on that list are:
Hungary, 21.5 (as of 2008)
Sri Lanka, 21.6 (as of 1996)
South Korea, 21.9 (as of 2006)
Ukraine, 22.6 (as of 2005)
Guyana, 22.9 (as of 2005)
Japan, 24.4 (as of 2007)
Kazakhstan, 26.9 (as of 2007)
Russia, 30.1 (as of 2006)
Lithuania, 30.7 (as of 2008)
Belarus, 35.1 (as of 2003)
Notes:
South Africa actually appears in the #1 spot in my list, but that’s because the combined male and female rate is listed as “n/a”. The indivual rates are 25.3 for men and 5.6 for women.
But that means that Japan is indeed in the top ten? Doesn’t that answer the question? I mean, otherwise you might as well compare them with the bottom ten nations.
Do we know that these countries are accurate in their record-keeping for suicides? Some of the ones on that list sound like the sort of place where $10 and a cold soda will make a cop say “Well, clearly he stabbed himself in the back. Case closed.”
As a fellow Cornellian, this saddens me greatly. The last guy who jumped was also an acquaintance of several of my friends.
It seems like the administration is taking this very seriously. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more mental health resources and progrwms than ever before.
Interesting only in as much as the types of people who edit wikipedia are fascinated with the topic.
While the rate in Japan is very high, it would be intersting to find out why suicide is even more prevalent in the other nations that are higher up the list than Japan is. One could guess poverty rates for most of them, though I had never gotten the vibe of “suicide is a good option” from Russian culture, for example. They always seemed to be a bit more stoic than that. And does South Korea (admitted lower on the list than Japan, but not by much) have a “suicide culture” as well?
Cornell’s reputation for suicides was greatly exaggerated, in part because when there was an incident, it gave newspaper editors excuses to print majestic pictures of the Ithaca gorges instead of the outside of some boring dormitory, and then, later, because the reputation was established, there was a big confirmation bias going on. But as noted in the OP, there has been a real uptick in the last couple years.
I know a lot of people who were good friends with the student who died over winter break. They said the administration was very helpful to them during the grieving process.
Driver, it sounds like you could use someone to talk to. When I was there, I know EARS (255-EARS) helped a lot of people out of some rough patches. (I did some training with them, although I never worked the phones.)
As a former Cornellian, this story makes me sad. Baby Driver, this thread may not have gone the way you were expecting, but I wanted to let you know that I’m sorry for what you and your classmates are going through. Cliffy made a great suggestion re: EARS, and there’s also CAPS at Gannett. Take care.
Cliffy and Sydney, thank you for your kind words. I will be fine. I have some very good friends, and we take care of one another. Cornell is taking it seriously, though some of it rings a bit hollow when you think of the admin up to their eyeballs in PR shit. Not that they’re not sincere, it’s just a very big listserve they’re sending all those messages of concern to. They are doing what they can. Gannett had a table in Mann library where a woman was distributing chocolate and travel-size packets of tissues, and I really was touched by the effort.
Whether you are Japanese or a Cornell student, I think it’s a little sad and pathetic that people would kill themselves because they didn’t think they would be able to fullfill their dream of working for some particular corporation.
Wow, you’re making a lot of assumptions about people you don’t seem to know or care about. You’re under no obligation to show compassion for them, of course, but your comment seems unduly callous in light of the OP’s posts in this thread. If you want to speculate and offer opinions like this, maybe you should start a new thread, assuming the mods would allow the discussion.
While I don’t agree with his sentiment, it is relevant and I don’t see why it requires a thread of its own or why the mods wouldn’t allow it to be discussed even if it did.
I mentioned the mods because there’s been some discussion in ATMB regarding what types of mental-health-related threads are OK for discussion. I wasn’t saying that his point isn’t relevant, and I don’t want to put more words in the mouth of the OP than I already have. All I was trying to say is that some of the points he raised might be difficult for someone who is dealing with campus-wide grief, and possibly also personal grief, right at this moment.
Sorry to hear about your struggles with understanding this, Baby Driver. As an Ithaca native, I immediately thought of Cornell upon seeing this thread as well. Even after hearing about all the student deaths every year for most of my life, it just never ceases to be so sad and hard to fathom. The suicides are terrible, and then there are the ones who go out drinking and never return home, only to be found later, or that decided to explore the gorge a little closer, and on and on. As sad and stark of a place as Ithaca can be, bear in mind that spring is right around the corner, and that’s a beautiful time to be there; it makes everything seem fresh and hopeful.
I wouldn’t be surprised if both Japan and Korea, as Asian countries that put a high value on “face,” had many people killing themselves out of shame over some embarrassing thing they did rather than depression itself. A culture like that that exists in those kinds of countries but not others might make it seem like something unique to those places.
At Cornell, it’s the dorms that do it. I once spent a week there sleeping in a dorm room and had the absolutely worst bed I have ever slept in. I should have thrown the mattress on the floor. I ended up with a severe sciataca attack that kept me incapacitated for nearly a month. But tat bed was enough to make anyone contemplate suicide.
The Bridge - disturbing documentary about suicide and the Golden Gate Bridge.
There was supposedly a cluster of suicides in my tiny hometown sometime in the late 70’s and it got bad enough that it was on 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to verify any of that as it’s just not talked about there. I’ve snooped a little over the internet but never found any confirmation.
