Need for inclusion and connection

The cover story for Newsweek a couple weeks ago (yeah, still behind) is about suicide. The rates have been rising worldwide for the last couple decades (as in well before the current economic mess). Worldwide, suicide now accounts for more deaths than war, murder, and forces of nature combined. Tony Dokoupil explores why.

Thomas Joiner Sr. killed himself. Thomas Joiner Jr. has spent his professional life examining the reasons. After exploring many things that turn out not to affect suicide Joiner found a few things that do:

* Loneliness, a "thwarted need for inclusion and connection."

Twelve years and a tech revolution after Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, his treatise on the decline in American community, the institutions that used to bind America together have, if anything, crumbled even further. People tell surveyors that the world has become less helpful, trustworthy, and fair. It’s a place where you work longer at more deadening jobs for less pay, your life pulsing away with each new email, or worse, each additional hour on your feet. What’s deadly about all this is the loss of what Joiner calls “reciprocal care.” When people have no shoulder to lean on, they feel more isolated, and that isolation can be lethal.

A big part of preventing suicide is to build up community, which is one of my guiding principles. From the quote above it looks like a lot of people are feeling the effects of the GOP working to destroy community. Blacks and Hispanics have a lower rate of suicide because they have a more enduring bonds of faith and family.

* Burdensomeness, a feeling of no longer being effective, no longer providing for family or contributing to the world. It is a feeling of being a liability, of failing those who need us. We are so geared towards offering help to others we have a hard time accepting help. This is why suicide rises with unemployment and why it is high in cultures of high honor. Depression is also a big part of this factor.

* Fearlessness of death. Our bodies are built to endure, our minds rigged to flee from death. To be fearless of death one must be numb to violence and pain. Yes, it has been shown that some of us become numb to violence through what is shown in media.

We may have periods of all three of these factors. It is the intersection of all three that lead to suicide. That means it is possible to prevent suicide by disrupting one of the three factors. To do that we must overcome the cost and stigma of treatment. Joiner says,

We need to get it in our heads that suicide is not easy, painless, cowardly, selfish, vengeful, self-masterful, or rash. And once we get all that in our heads at last, we need to let it lead our hearts.