Archives

by Elaine Lies

TOKYO, (Reuters)-The woman was desperate. Her son had already tried to kill himself once and she was terrified he would try again.

"He keeps saying he wants to die," she told a Tokyo suicide hotline. "Is there any place where we can get some help?"

Her plea is increasingly common. Japanese suicide rates, always relatively high, have jumped to alarming levels, with more than 30,000 people killing themselves each year since 1998.

Of these, a rising number were pushed to desperation by a prolonged economic slump that has claimed numerous companies and driven unemployment up to a record postwar high.

Yet the very fact that a suicide hotline exists at all is encouraging, experts say, as a Japanese government once hesitant to acknowledge what was seen as a shameful issue finally moves to draw up preventive measures.

It could hardly come too soon. According to police, 31,042 Japanese took their own lives in 2001 - down slightly from a record 33,048 in 1999 but still about the same number as in the United States, which has twice Japan's population.

"Twenty-five years ago, I went to the mental health division of the Health Ministry and said they should pull together a suicide prevention policy," said Yukio Saito, head of the "Inochi no Denwa" - Phone of Life - hotline. "The official there told me suicide didn't fall under their jurisdiction.

"That the ministry is now working on this kind of policy - well, times have changed."

No religious prohibitions exist against suicide in Japan and it was long seen as a way to escape failure, or of saving loved ones from embarrassment or financial loss. Yet at the same time it was also stigmatised as a shameful, taboo subject.

Health ministry officials say they only began to take the issue seriously after the number of suicides jumped in the late 1990s and then stayed above 30,000 for several years.

Experts warn that blaming suicide on a single cause is simplistic, citing factors such as the loneliness caused by being single or divorced and, for some older people, the residual impact of social upheavals such as World War Two which make them insecure in the face of change.

Most, though, acknowledge that Japan's economic downturn since the late 1990s has had a disastrous effect.

Even though suicides dipped in 2001, a record number were attributed to economic troubles, with men making up 71 percent of the total and middle-aged men especially vulnerable.

"I've heard some very confessional things from men who are small business owners," said William Wetherall, an independent researcher. "They lose a contract, they can't get a loan, they're dead in the water and they're desperate."

Few men hired in an era of lifetime employment are prepared to cope with losing the work that is their identity, especially when new jobs are hard to find, particularly for older men . "People who say they want to die aren't always those who have lost their jobs, but those who worry they might," Saito said. "Society as a whole has lost hope." Japan has been horrified by a recent string of suicides in which people made contact through the Internet and agreed to die together, usually by using charcoal stoves in cars on deserted mountain roads.

 Experts agree the trend is troubling but say it is pointless to blame the Internet. In fact, the Internet holds promise for suicide prevention by making people aware of possible options for help through chat rooms or other services, they say. Officials say the priority is simply making it easier for people to discuss their worries in a nation where psychological care systems are still basic and often overloaded. "About half the people we talk to are seeing doctors," said Yukiko Nishihara, who runs a Tokyo suicide prevention centre. "But they wait a long time for just two or three minutes, kind of like 'so, how are you?'. 

In some ways we do what doctors should." The government plans to streamline counselling systems and increase accessibility, especially in the public health offices that are the backbone of medical care in more rural areas. "We need a consultation system, places where people can go before they start feeling really bad," said Kimiko Ueda, a mental health adviser to the Health Ministry. The ministry has held a year-long series of advisory meetings, given money for telephone hotlines such as Saito's and made public service announcements that such services exist. "Then we have to make clear that depression is something that can happen to anybody," Ueda added. 

"That it's no shame." Getting Japanese to make use of these services may be easier said than done. Psychological problems still bear a stigma and endurance has long been a virtue in Japan, making it difficult for men in particular to bare their souls. "There was an old samurai saying that no matter what happened, a man had to be unperturbed," Saito said. There is progress, though, with people learning to seek help. Nishihara's group, which runs an all-night hotline, can get as many as 30 calls on a busy night, especially in March at the end of the financial year, often a fraught period for businesses.

www.crescat.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager