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REPORTS: LATIN AMERICA |
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Saturday 20
September 2003
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Unemployment,
Hopelessness Drive the Young to
Suicide
Mario
Osava*
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) - Osirene Melo,
who has manned a suicide hot-line once
a week for 10 years in northern
Brazil, says many of the calls are
from troubled youngsters who have
found it impossible to land their
first job.
The phone calls she attends on her
23:00-7:00 shift at the Life
Appreciation Centre in Belém, the
capital of the northern Brazilian
state of Pará, often depict a complex
scenario of ''emotional and family''
problems, she told IPS.
But ''I have also seen an increase in
worry and anxiety caused by the
increasingly common situation of
searching and searching for a job
without luck,'' she added.
The number of suicides is growing
among the young. In Brazil, the
suicide rate among 15 to 24-year-olds
in 11 state capitals climbed 42.8
percent between 1979 and 1998, to five
per 100,000 population, a study by the
Latin American Centre on Violence and
Health (CLAVES) revealed. And the
overall average rose 27.3 percent, to
3.98 per 100,000 population.
In Argentina, where the suicide rate
has remained stable for the past 10
years, at 6.7 per 100,000 inhabitants,
the official statistics show an
increase among youngsters between the
ages of 10 and 19, from 4.7 per
100,000 in 1990 to 8.3 in 2000.
A situation in which ''diminishing
opportunities and the difficulty of
insertion into society'' due to
growing unemployment, which becomes
''a seemingly permanent phenomenon for
many, reducing the prospects of a
positive future,'' creates a
breeding-ground for young people ''to
give up on life,'' Edinilsa Ramos de
Souza, lead author of the CLAVES
study, told IPS.
But there is a multiplicity of factors
that lead people to take their own
lives, said the psychologist. The
break-up of a family, conflicts, the
loss of a loved one, depression,
serious illness and drug abuse were
factors mentioned by her and by other
experts interviewed by IPS.
''Loss of prestige or the
deterioration of one's social image''
is another cause, said Ricardo González,
president of the Psychiatric
Association of Cuba, a country with
one of the highest suicide rates in
Latin America: 13.6 per 100,000
population in 2001.
Among adolescents, ''failure to live
up to expectations -- whether one's
own, or those of one's parents --
regarding school performance'' also
plays a role, said González.
According to Cuba's public health
statistics, suicide and self-inflicted
injuries are the third cause of death
among Cubans between the ages of 10
and 19, at a rate of four per 100,000
inhabitants.
''Adolescence is a difficult time, in
which you are in charge of a body that
you can't manage, and you go through
crises of authority, sexuality and
identity. For that reason, the highest
number of attempted suicides involves
people around 20 years of age,''
Javier Auli, director of child and
adolescent psychiatry at the Javeriana
University in Bogota, commented to IPS.
Suicide attempts are the top cause of
hospitalization of teenagers in the
San Ignacio teaching hospital where
Auli works, which mainly attends
middle-class patients.
Young people between the ages of 12
and 18 see suicide in a ''romantic''
light, said psychiatrist Luis Alfonzo,
coordinator of the Venezuelan Health
Ministry's mental health programme.
But in Venezuela, a majority of the
1,264 people who committed suicide in
2000 -- amounting to a rate of five
per 100,000 population -- were men
between the ages of 25 and 44.
Although there are no statistics yet
that would shed light on the effects
of the political turmoil plaguing
Venezuela since 2001, there has been
an increase in visits to psychiatrists
and in the number of cases of
psychological problems that are often
present in people who end up trying to
commit suicide, such as depression,
anxiety, phobias, obsessions, and
diminished sexual desire.
''Venezuelans have been discontented
since the 'caracazo','' a social
uprising and brutal crackdown by the
security forces that left a death toll
of 500 in 1989, and ''the high
unemployment, rising crime and recent
political polarization have affected
their health,'' said researcher Mireya
Lozada at the Central University of
Caracas Psychology Institute.
But economic crises do not always
bring an immediate rise in the number
of suicides, noted González in Cuba,
who pointed out that suicide rates
have even declined in certain
countries during times of economic
turbulence.
That was borne out by Nelly Feldman,
the president of SOS Un Amigo Anónimo
(SOS An Anonymous Friend), a
non-governmental organization in
Argentina that for 35 years has
provided a hot-line for people who are
depressed or considering suicide,
which receives an average of 40 calls
a day.
During the late 2001 and early 2002
economic and social collapse in
Argentina -- as well as during the
country's brief Malvinas/Falkland
islands war with Britain in 1982 and
other crisis situations -- the number
of calls received by the hot-line fell
off, and only rose again once the peak
of the crisis had passed, she pointed
out.
When crises reach breaking-point,
people mobilize socially, and ''those
who have problems feel greater
support, find spaces in which to
express themselves and be heard, and
see that many other people are going
through the same thing as they are,''
Feldman explained.
But based on her experience in SOS,
Feldman says there has been an
increase recently in cases of anxiety,
depression and violence.
For some youngsters, suicide is ''one
more step down a path to
self-destruction which usually
includes alcohol, drugs, and
especially a lack of prospects for the
future,'' due to the high unemployment
rate which currently affects nearly a
quarter of the population and ''the
many injustices that the generation of
their parents has been suffering,''
she said.
In Uruguay, unemployment that affects
more than one in five people and the
economic debacle -- largely caused by
the fallout of the crisis in
neighbouring Argentina -- led to an
upsurge of suicides last year, driving
the rate up to 20 per 100,000
population, the highest rate in the
Americas.
For decades, the suicide rate in
Uruguay, a Southern Cone country of
3..3 million, has been higher than the
global average. In 2002, 683 people
took their own lives, 505 in 2001, and
586 in 2000, the Ministry of Public
Health reported.
As in many countries, the number of
suicides among males is nearly four
times higher than among females in
Uruguay, and the most vulnerable age
categories are 20 to 25, 40 to 44, and
60 to 64, according to a study by
psychiatrist Federico Dajas, published
by the Medical Magazine of Uruguay.
In 2000, 815,000 people committed
suicide worldwide, compared to 310,000
deaths related to wars and conflicts,
and 520,000 homicides, according to
World Health Organization (WHO)
statistics.
Suicide is a public health problem
that has grown in the past few
decades, especially among the young.
For each suicide, there are 10 to 20
''unsuccessful'' attempts that often
leave permanent disabilities or other
serious after-effects, says the WHO.
Suicide is more frequent in
industrialized countries. In Canada
and the United States, the combined
average suicide rate is 11.6 per
100,000 population, compared to a
regional average of 5.6 per 100,000
population in Latin America and the
Caribbean, according to the WHO.
Suicide rates are also high in Japan
and the Scandinavian countries, where
living standards are among the highest
in the world.
* Marcela Valente in Argentina, María
Isabel García in Colombia, Patricia
Grogg in Cuba, Humberto Márquez in
Venezuela and Diana Cariboni in
Uruguay contributed to this report.
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