Suicides Are Frequent in Rich, Developed Countries

Writers, psychologists, demographers express their opinion about the issue of suicide

Photo: Suicides Are Frequent in Rich, Developed Countries

This subject is considered to be a scandalous one, basically. Brushing the issue of sensation aside, it goes without saying that a human life is always extremely valuable even when it is the life of someone else. This does not allow to arrogantly ignore the issue of suicide. 

Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek, a witty and cynical person, wrote the following about suicide: "His father was an alcoholic and he committed suicide shortly before he was born. His junior sister drowned herself, a train killed his senior sister, his brother jumped off a railway bridge. His grandfather killed his wife, spilled some kerosene on himself and struck a match. His cousin had several criminal records for arsons, he cut his carotid artery with a piece of glass."

This is just a retelling of what a character from the book "The Good Soldier Svejk" said. Russian writer and philosopher Vasily Rozanov had another point of view on the subject.

"When life does not seem to be sweet anymore, what is the point of living then? You will commit a great sin, if you kill yourself. Devils! Did you look into my yearning to teach me when it is too late? What do you have to do with me? What do I have to do with you? Whether I die or not - it's my business."

A lot of other writers evince their interest in the issue of suicide. However, Fyodor Dostoevsky was the writer, who took it really personal. His diaries and novels make readers shudder: there is always a character, who commits suicide. As a matter of fact, it does not mean that the writer was drawn to writing about so-called cursed issues. Such things appeared in his books on account of the Russian reality.

“A Writer's Diary” (October 1876) contains a chapter that is called "Two Suicides." Dostoevsky wrote that all events of life often occur in a simple and understandable way for an observer. This simplicity does not make a human being think about something. Some other observer gets really concerned about the same events of their lives. At times they are incapable of summarizing or simplifying them, so they simply shoot themselves in the head in order to kill their tortured minds together with all questions at once. These are only two opposite things, although they hold the entire human sense.

An opinion of a modern specialist, a psychologist or a psychiatrist sounds otherwise:

"The major reason of a suicide is the feeling of inanity of living. This feeling is connected with the situation of a certain society, particularly with the economic instability, ideological mess, overestimation of public moral norms. As far as large cities are concerned, psychologists call this phenomenon "anonymity in a crowd." In other words, it is a situation, when a person feels terribly lonely, having a lot of pals and colleagues. There can be three forms of suicide distinguished: real, affective and demonstrative suicide. Real suicide is characterized with a strong wish of an individual to commit suicide. Affective suicide is characterized with being too emotional, while demonstrative suicide is used as a way to attract other people's attention.

"The first kind of suicide is typical for men, while the second and the third kind is typical for women. It would be wrong to say that all suicides are committed by mentally unbalanced people. There are a lot of intellectual individuals among them. However, a lot of them feel the loss of perspectives of life, and they can not accept the level of biological existence, like, for example, a plant in a pot or an animal in a cage. As a rule, suicides are people that have a rich and rather complicated inner world. Such people create a special spiritual environment, which is rather vulnerable for exterior influences. A slightest fracture of that environment is a tragedy for the people, who live in it. If they think that obstacles can not be surmounted (although they are virtually things of no importance rather often), such people think that there is only one way out for them - to bid farewell to life."

An opinion of a demographer:

"A suicide is a social and psychological state of a person under the condition of an unsettled conflict. It is the implementation of the deliberate wish to leave this world. It is not right to consider all suicides crazy people. Nowadays, the number of suicides in large Russian cities reaches 50 amid 100 thousand people. This is a serious fact and there is every reason for specialists to get concerned about it. There can be a lot of reasons found to commit suicide. Such reason as loneliness is rather typical for large cities. The combination of loneliness and super-stresses of social and economic nature makes a lot of people think of doing something fatal. So-called micro-conflicts play a very important role as well - a claim of one person to another one. We just can not communicate with each other kindly."

The only thing that one has to think about seriously is the fact that suicides are very frequent in rich and prospering countries - Denmark and Switzerland in Europe, for example. Apparently, a high living standard does not give the feeling of fulfillment and happiness.

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