Listening to a podcast about suicide this morning brought back memories from perhaps the 1950's or 1960's that of course it related to communism. Yes, for communism to be sure, but at that time in the U.S. it even seemed
unwise to say a kind word about socialism. Nonetheless, a few brave souls would put the Scandinavian societies in a favorable light as admirable for their safety-net that helped only ordinary people. But the right had an ready made retort, pointing out the then high rates of suicide in Sweden. Obviously that this was a clear indication of a society in distress and surely these socialist policies were to blame. That was a clear lesson that any policy with a hint of socialism was to be strictly avoided.Recalling this fragment of largely forgotten history, I turned to the internet and quickly find some much more recent data on suicide. Currently the United States has a suicide rate of 16.1 per 100,000 population each year, a rate that is higher than the 14.7 in Sweden and decidedly higher than other social-democratic countries like Norway, the Netherlands, Iceland and Denmark, all below 12 per 100K. Canada likewise enjoys a rate of under 12. The rate for the U.S. is higher even than in China or Cuba. The nation of Venezuela, so widely maligned by our government and our media, has the embarrassingly low rate of suicide of only 2.1 per 100,000.
I hesitate to say how we should interpret this information, but it does seem to explain why we no longer hear about the suicide rate in Sweden as an argument against social programs. In fact there no longer seems an argument given at all beyond an emotional appeal that relies on communism and socialism just being bad and surely we all should surely know that. It seems to have turned into a religious issue now.
The map on the site with the suicide data is well worth some study. It is an active map that allows you to hover over individual countries to reveal their specific data. But at a more global level, the purple colored areas are particularly interesting for they show the countries with particularly low rates of suicide, generally below 6. Most noticeably, the rates are low in the middle east and the less prosperous areas of Africa. The rates are low throughout central America and much of South America. Small island countries and even Myanmar and Bangladesh are also blessed such low rates; in fact that entire southwest Asian peninsula (with the exception of Thailand with its 8.8 suicides per 100K, huge compared to it neighbors) being in the purple category.