I’m not directly linking to character, but in certain cases when someone has taken their life due to a tragic happening in their life, I feel that this generation is not able to handle that as well as previous generations. Mainly due to the upbringing and obviously the different societal backgrounds at the time.
I’d imagine the extremely low social status of travellers plays at least some part here. A huge proportion of suicides are at root about personal feelings of inadequacy or an absence of self worth. It irritates me no end when people say “When people want to kill themselves why don’t they just leave everything and go wherever they want, they have nothing to lose etc…”
They don’t go somewhere else because they don’t want to live with themselves anymore and that’s something they can never change. Suicide becomes the one weapon they’ve left against their own powerlessness.
That about sums it up. Talking about it more doesn’t just mean saying anything you like about it. It means making it easier for those thinking about doing it to talk to people more than anything. To let them know other people are thinking like them and that they can be helped.
I feel like listening to a lot of Morrissey this evening.
Read much Sartre in uni mate.
I’m not making points regard societal upbringings, I’m making towards generational upbringings. People of a lower class background clearly have more disillusioning factors that will influence on their happiness.
Agreed. As you say self worth has a lot to do with it.suicide affects every section of modern Irish society.
So basically you were saying people are more likely to commit suicide nowadays than they were before. I agree. Try to be a bit more clear in future we’ll save ourselves a lot of time.
It is awful. He must have been in a very dark place. Pity he wasn’t able to talk to someone about how he was feeling.
According to the UCD report the rate of suicide in Ireland jumped from 8 per 100,000 of the population aged 15 and over to 21 suicides per 100,000 in 2009.
The number of officially reported suicides in Ireland fell from 527 in 2009 to 486 in 2010.
FFS. Don’t blame me because you can’t comprehend things and then go around throwing all sorts of labels. At no point did I make any reference to it being a class problem. That was something you invented yourself and it’s in even poorer taste that not only do you refuse to apologise, but pass the buck.
Would certain factors like the recession and emigration have had an effect on these numbers Sid.
After a quick Google it seems the suicide rates amongst Travellers are anywhere between 3 and 7 times the rate of suicide amongst the settled community, according to various studies. That’s an incredibly high rate, even at the low end.
[quote=“Mr. Totti, post: 637219”]
Would certain factors like the recession and emigration have had an effect on these numbers Sid.
[/quote][left]
[font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”] [/size][/font][/size][/font][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]In this paper we model the behaviour of the Irish suicide rate over the period 1968‐2009 using[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]the unemployment rate and the level of alcohol consumption as explanatory variables. It is[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]found that these variables have significant positive effects on suicide mortality in several[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]demographic groups. Alcohol consumption is a significant influence on the male suicide rate up[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]to age 64. Its influence on the female suicide rate is not as well‐established, although there is[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]evidence that it is important in the 15‐24 and 25‐34 age groups. The unemployment rate is also[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]a significant influence on the male suicide rate in the younger age groups. The behaviour of[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]suicide rates among males aged 55 and over and females aged 25 and over is largely[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]unaccounted for by our model. These broad conclusions hold when account is taken of a[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]structural break in the 1980s, with the response to unemployment being greater in the earlier[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]period and that to alcohol greater in the later period. The findings suggest that higher alcohol[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]consumption played a major role in the increase in suicide mortality among young Irish males[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]between the late 1960s and the end of the century. In the early twenty first century a[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]combination of falling alcohol consumption and low unemployment led to a marked reduction[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]in suicide rates, although there is some evidence that the suicide rate is being increasingly[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]under‐reported in recent years. The recent rise in the suicide rate may be attributed to the[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left][left][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]sharp increase in unemployment, especially among males, but it has been moderated by the[/size][/font][/size][/font]
[font=“Cambria”][size=“3”][font=“Cambria”][size=“3”]continuing fall in alcohol consumption. Some policy implications of the findings are discussed.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/left]
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Discrimination and associated esteem issues would id imagine be a big contributory factor here. In addition, traveller men would probably not be great at communicating worries/issues as this may be perceived as weakness in their community. Thus they may be more inclined to bottle things up.
Just noticed the glaring omission in the above post.
The Irish suicide rate was 8 per 100,000 in 1969
It jumped to 21 per 100,000 in 2009.
It’s fair to say there are significant cultural factors at work there.
This is exactly what I’m saying. I’m not saying that the fact he had depression was a disgrace, it’s one of the biggest diseases in this country. I called the act of sucide by a man with two young boys a disgrace. He was old enough and wise enough to know that there is help out there. There should be no stigma attached to the disease.
Very very interesting stat. Advances in ICT over this period may possible have resulted in lower self esteem amongst individuals due to exposure to greater possible triggers of inadeqacy such as appearance, family, job etc.
Irish society as a whole fixated itself on materialism. It was the dominant culture, in politics, in media, at every level of society. Travellers were not immune from that. My hunch is that culture increased their sense of isolation and alienation from the rest of society.
If suicide is often a result of inadequacy and lack of self-worth, and I would certainly agree that it is, then it’s quite logical to me that high suicide rates amongst Travellers are at least in part connected with that culture of materialism and the increased alienation Travellers felt as a result.
That material culture has contributed to a general dissatisfaction amongst the population because of its inherent shallowness. I’d guess some of Fenway’s pupils are livng this out and they don’t even realise it, it’s all they know. Not having material goods can make you unhappy and it can decrease your self of self-worth. But having them doesn’t make you happy or give you self-worth. But this is how people in Ireland measured and still measure their success, in these narrow terms. It’s a pretty depressing legacy that the generation born in the 1990s inherit.