Surely happiness exists- certain things effect our moods, whether it’s a sunny day or the loss of something big in our lives we can all agree to a certain point that happiness is something tangible. Consider this question from a Quality of Life Survey: How happy would you say you are at the moment? You would normally be given 5 responses to choose from: Very Happy, Happy, neither/nor feeling neutral about the issue of being happy, Unhappy, Very Unhappy. Geography provides a structure in which we can attempt to explain how interconnected everything is- form how much money we make to our quantified life satisfaction. Geographers are interested in why things like happiness differ from place to place. Survey sets allow us to quantify happiness, life satisfaction and quality of life, levels of stress, trust social capital- as long as they continue to include question about these particular things.
Psychologist Adrian White may have been the first to map SWB or happiness. In this particular map we can see that happiness peaks in USA, Australia and Canada and drops in Russia.
Mapping happiness certainly has become a popular idea.
Economist, sociologist and psychologists all have special interests in making a science out of subjective well-being, a term that has been loosely interchangeable with Happiness, Quality of Life and Life satisfaction. I am most interested this question about life satisfaction.
I find it particularly interesting that places with the least amount of happiness and life satisfaction have some of the highest suicide rates. This is in part why I argue that suicide is can be thought of as the endpoint of SWB, it is the end of our subjective perception of well-being.
These maps also show two trends of suicide:
a. Typically men exhibit higher levels of suicide
b. but females attempt suicide more- this is true for many OECD countries
This is true even within countries. Red being high levels of suicide rates. Men commit suicide more than women, and this clusters in particular regions. Why might suicide be higher in certain areas over others? What is different about the communities on the West Coast, than the communities in the South East of the United States?
Collecting information on Suicide is difficult, there is a lot of stigma around suicide, and countries may report deaths as accidental for religious and personal purposes. This list of countries with the highest suicide rates comes from information collected by WHO found on Wikipedia’s . Notice that the years differ ranging from 1996 to 2010. New Zealand comes in at 28. 11 out of the 29 highest suicide rates are OECD countries, highlighted with red arrows.
(2007) New Zealand comes in at 11 in OECD rankings. In 2006 New Zealand had the second highest youth suicide rates 15-24- second to Finland for males and Japan for females. Why is this? How can these well off countries be suffering form such high suicide rates, youth suicide rates at that?
This is a difficult graph to present. In light of recent publicity on the suicide rate being higher than the Motor traffic accidents this comparison has been true for nearly a decade.
Over the past 10 years NZ has pursued capturing happiness’s greater effects on the society using New Zealand’s quality of life survey following collecting information from 12 cities, as well as 1200 respondents outside the 12 cities. Thankfully, New Zealand has also taken a strong stance against suicide- my research is meant to add to the literature as to what are possible environmental correlates of low SWB in hopes to reveal possible correlates of suicidal behavior- Strangely enough this is done by considering what makes us happy!
Happiness follows a U-Shape
This is an inverse U-shape of the probability of being depressed by age. Economists Blanchflower and Oswald took a random sample of nearly 1,000,000 in a UK labour force and found that the chances of suffering from depression peaks at 43, when there are teenagers in the house. Each dot represents approximately 17,000 people.
There are many factors that influence the U-Shape of Happiness
Socioeconomic- The Stiglitz Report was a response to economic growth as an indicator of progress. It provides an outline for capturing the progress of place, leaving its readers with a call to collect more information especially along the lines of SWB.
Genetics/Personality- Some people are happier than others, thus the Pollyanna effect- rather a perpetual state of cheeriness, does have some scientific merit. But diagnosing those who are chronically happy is not really in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry. Psychologist Dr. Ed Diener has staked his claim in SWB studies- citied over 12,000 Diner attempts to disentangling psychosomatic from cultural differences of SWB. What Diener is most concerned with is how much is personality feeding into high and low accounts of life satisfaction- and incredibly complex argument.
Health- Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett found that across whole populations, rates of mental illness are five times higher in the most unequal societies. The Spirit level discussed how inequalities affect not just the poor, but the vast majority of the population.
Education- From Michael Marmot research of the British Whitehall studies I and II (which included women) we know that there is a clear health gradient to social status. People with more education and higher paying jobs typically live longer. Professors are great examples of high status people with long life expectancies.
Making assumptions about a place raises many issues.
I am most concerned with the Social Climate of a place as the “Environment”- Happiness by social climate of the place measures the values of society.
Ronald Ingelhart- Political Science professor at University of Michigan helped create a database called world values survey. Now anyone can gain access to their information.
Robert Putnam and David Halpern use trust and social capital as one way of assessing if psychological needs are being address in a particular place, and a general check the progression of a place. This is a map from page 293 of Putnams’ Bowling Alone. Why is social capital low in Nevada? Is a person unhappy because they are a natural grump- or are their environmental factors, such as the social context that we live that make a person unhappy?
Young people pose an interesting confection. Most would agree that young people can often be moody and unpredictable but consider the social climate- are there environmental factors, like connection to our community and trust levels that are better predictors of life satisfaction.
What are some possible reasons for low levels of life satisfaction? Why are levels of SWB lower for youth in New Zealand, why might the suicide rates be higher?
What do we know about suicide?
There is always a risk in discussing suicide. But what is the greater risk, not discussing it? Suicide is an incredibly complex and dark subject. Things that are said in this segment of the presentation may bring up personal experiences, and I strongly encourage you to talk to people you trust, and or use the free counseling services available if you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, behavior or depression. Loosing someone to suicide is very painful and I’d like you know you are not alone. Please talk to someone.
With that in mind…
It is not helpful to think of suicide is a personal failure. Depression and Suicide are highly correlated. Suicidal thoughts are induced somewhat by chemical imbalances in the synaptic gap. From Durkheim’s famous sociological studies we know that suicide has something to with the community/society was live in but the exact source of what causes being suicidal is unknown.
The story of suicide might be intimately linked with SWB measurements:
We don’t know the exact source of depression, but we do know that happiness has something to do with our environment, and who we are surround by. The story of happiness is the lack of negative effect, autonomy, and attunement with others. The story of depression has yet to be written.
The American Association of Suicidology estimated that for each of the 32,000 Americans who kill themselves annually there are six survivors. Suicide is deadly to communities- it devastates surviving loved ones unlike other fatalities, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders rank surviving suicide as catastrophic- equivalent to that of a concentration camp experience.
Suicide has been a health problem in New Zealand for quite some time. From 2001-2006 307 people died by, “assault mortality” or murder. In 2006 alone 524 people in New Zealand took their own lives, multiply that by 6 and that is 3,000 plus people who are suffering from a traumatic stressful experience- JUST IN 2006.
Age- From Suicide Prevention Stats, given out by the Ministry of Health the typical profile of youth suicide in (< 25 years) suicide describes a young male, characterized by family and social disadvantage, a history of attempted suicide, current mood disorder, and stressful interpersonal and legal life events.
Among adult suicides, males predominate, and mental disorder (particularly mood disorder) and a history of psychiatric hospitalisation play a dominant role. Against this background of mental health problems, recent interpersonal and legal life events increase suicide risk (Suicide Prevention Stats- Ministry of Health).
Socioeconomic- “There were 13.3. deaths per 100,000 population (age standardized) in the most deprived areas in 2007. There were 7.7 deaths per 100,000 population (age standardized) in the least deprived areas in 2007.
“There is a significant difference in rates between deprived areas and the most deprived areas” (Both quotes from Suicide Facts- Ministry of Health).
Social Climate- One possible reason that youth may exhibit Lower SWB in New Zealand may be community cohesion. Youth are less likely to feel a sense of community, especially outside the 12 cities.
Trust Levels are popular to measure, as we can see in these graphs from national accounts of well-being. Younger people in Europe are less likely to trust others (dark red) than 50-64 year olds.
Reason #2 for lower levels of Youth SWB could be the results of lower levels of trust. This is a table of the extent in which youth believe others can be trusted in their communities. Youth are clearly less likely to trust others.
Why?
Suicide Testimony books have been most helpful. Considering the complexity of suicide it was important to read many stories to search for patters within suicidal behavior.
Slogans from past campaigns have echo social climate issues:
“Remember it’s up to you how much they suffer”- It is the community’s responsibility to take care of those who have mental illnesses.
I can attest that life for those who suffer psychologically is shrouded in secrecy- poverty, sexual abuse, and poor literacy skills- things that isolate people because they are difficult to talk about.
A policeman describing suicidal teens said:
“Living is harder these days. Kids want to be successful but they can’t. It’s too hard. It’s a lot more work. Drugs and alcohol are so easily accessible. There is more pressure academically and socially.”
This gets at the fact that living conditions and the social climate might be different today than it was 50 years ago.
Just the psychical pain of depression is often misunderstood:
“People have a lot of compassion and understanding for intense physical pain and appreciate the need for treatment of it. But the vast majority of people have no concept at all of how intense psychological pain can be for some people”
Why is that? Stigma stats reveal that:
“Stigma is sighted as the leading barrier to care (68.1%). Stigma is identified as a more significant barrier in high-income countries (80%), than low-income countries (37.5%), where transport and lack of available treatment resources are identified as the most significant barriers to care (22).
There are many helpful services such as Lifeline, Youthline, Samaritans, Skylight, text counseling services, e-mail counseling services and phone counseling services.
When I called some of thee services and asked if they had programs for suicide survivors some of the volunteers did not know what a suicide survivor was. Which brings us to an important point.
There does not seem to be a language or agreed term as to who suffers from suicide. The person who committed suicide is a victim, or suicided individual. The loved ones left behind are the survivors. Or are they the victims of a suicided individual? This problem only adds to the sigma and confusion in how to discuss suicide on how to discuss suicide within our community.
In Conclusion: Youth are a slightly unhappier bunch, and there is a spatial difference in youth SWB.
Life Satisfaction (Trust and Social Capital) is somewhat determined by geography- where you live and who you live by matters/has a significant effect on your life satisfaction.
2 things that correlate with Life Satisfaction: Social Capital, Trust levels
Is there a relationship between community and suicide rates?
Last Friday was World Suicide Prevention day. WHO put out this quote that New Zealand adopted on September 10th:
“(we) strongly believe if our communities work towards being better connected, through sharing information, expertise and time, we can do a great deal to help those who are in need, desperate, and vulnerable to suicide”
