Suicide Capital of the World?

[Perknose]

24 times the rate of the US. :shocked:

Some excerpts from the article:

They [Greenlanders] also boasted a suicide rate among the world's lowest. One Danish analysis found that from 1900 to 1930, Greenland had an annual suicide rate of just 0.3 people per 100,000.

[...]

In 1970, the number of suicides began to rise, and for most of the next 16 years, the rate inched upward. When it peaked in 1986, suicide was the leading cause of death for young people in several towns.

Some suspect that Greenlandic teens choose suicide for the same reason young people do almost everything else?because they see their friends doing it. As Malcolm Gladwell theorized in The Tipping Point, such a "contagious idea" could be behind Micronesia's high teen-suicide rate during the 1970s and '80s.

Poulsen blames the country's poverty and high alcoholism and incest rates, but she admits she's just guessing. "If I knew, I would tell you. We just don't know."

One reason for Greenland's high suicide rate is that people are particularly proficient at the act, employing methods that leave little chance for survival. Shootings and hangings account for 91 percent of male suicides and 70 percent of female suicides.

One might assume that the harsh, dark winter would be when suicide rates peak, but in fact most people kill themselves in summer...

[...]

The researchers theorize that the brief and bright summer sun disrupts winter sleep cycles, alters serotonin levels, and causes some Greenlanders to snap, especially those in the far north, where the sun stays above the horizon for weeks on end.

. . . almost all the deaths involved people born after 1950?the same year that Greenland began its transformation from remote colony to welfare state, as the Danes resettled residents to give them modern services and tuberculosis inoculations. Hicks, the Canadian researcher, said the correlation is present in other Inuit societies as well.

If this was posted in P&N I'd have to leave some commentary, but this is OT, so suck on it. 😉

 

[FoBoT]

disrupting historical cultures can have pretty devastating consequences

 

[Rubycon]

Text

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
disrupting historical cultures can have pretty devastating consequences

they're just thinning out the ranks so the mentally stronger individuals of that culture can pass on their better genetics and in a few hundred years develop they'll move to slowly adopt the world's dominant cultures as their own and become an integrated society. 😛

 

[destrekor]

damn, even the girls and using guns and nooses. Damn, those are some hardcore females.
Here like 70% of girls attempt it with pills and quite a few guys too.

 

[FoBoT]

people that take pills often just want to try, they don't really want to succeed
that is the most striking thing in the article, the fact they use the most successful methods