Summary: by Dr. Keith Witt<br> Suicide has been in existence as long as self-aware consciousness has been in existence. The gift of self-aware consciousness included the capacity for humans to anticipate and understand the inevitability of their own deaths, and all gifts come with a price.<br> One price of awareness of death is the capacity to choose it.<br> In some tribal cultures, the choice of suicide was considered moral for the aged and infirm. Rather than be a drain on precious resources, people would walk into the blizzard, or be ritually executed by friends.<br> In Classical Greek societies, suicide was considered a right by many; though Aristotle was quite critical of the choice (Socrates had no problem with it obviously).<br> Christian cultures have pathologized and punished suicide. In medieval times in Paris, suicides’ bodies were dragged through the streets and thrown on refuse heaps. The Catholic Church relegated suicides to Hell, and made it a sin to choose one’s own death.<br> Japanese samurai culture glorified seppuku (known more commonly in the west as harakiri) in men and women–suicide to avoid dishonor.<br> In modern America, suicide has increased 24% nationally since 1999, and much more in the intermountain red states of Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, North and South Dakota, Kansas, Minnesota, as well as in Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. In the 23 poorest states, the rates have gone up 38% to 58%. Previously from 1970 to 2000, suicide also increased dramatically in most demographics, so this is a definite trend in American culture for the last fifty years.<br> 54% of suicides don’t have a psychiatric diagnosis, probably reflecting the resistance to treatment in many groups. I think by definition suicide attempts are reflections of at least temporary insanity—one study of people who had survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge reported that, on the way down, all of them thought some version of, “This is worst idea I ever had!”<br> Some studies show that for every completed suicide, there are 25 attempts, so there are over a million suicide attempts each year in the U.S.<br> The most vulnerable to suicide statistically are 45 to 64 year olds, and suicide in women has increased 80%, narrowing the historic gender gap between sexes. Native American suicide has also increased enormously, and suicide by teens is on the rise.<br> Suicide is contagious. One study from the fifties and sixties showed an average of 58 extra suicide deaths for every front page story of suicide. There were 10% to 12% increases in national suicide figures the weeks after Marilyn Monroe’s and Robin William’s deaths.<br> Even more chillingly, in the weeks after a front page suicide story of an individual there are increased fatal single car accidents, three times more fatalities in car accidents in general, and similar figures for plane accidents. Are these conscious or unconscious suicide attempts triggered by the news stories? If it’s young person suicide, the increase is mostly in young drivers. If it’s an older person suicide, the increase is mostly in older drivers. Weeks after murder/suicides, there are increases in multiple deaths in car and plane accidents.<br> WTF?!!!<br> Something is wrong with American culture and getting worse, but what’s wrong, and what should we do?<br> Like most social issues, suicide is a wicked problem with multiple components. Suicide is not one thing but many things. Suicide does not have one cause, but many causes. There is not one solution but many solutions. That being said, there are some social forces that clearly are contributing to the problem that are either invisible to many or resistant to change.<br> More medication is not the answer. 1 in 10 Americans are on psychotropic medications, and antidepressants are so widely used that they are a significant pollutant in fish from America’s oceans. Kelly Brogan,
