Studies on Suicide
If we are faced with a pandemic it is one of loneliness and its corollary: suicide
Letters from Vienna #15
Studies on Suicide
“She talked about suicide” Alfred Alvarez wrote of Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide on 11th of February 1963, “in much the same tone as she talked about any other risky, testing activity: urgently, even fiercely, but altogether without self-pity. She seemed to view death as a physical challenge she had, once again, overcome. It was an experience of much the same quality as riding Ariel (her stallion) or mastering a bolting horse – which she had done as a Cambridge undergraduate – or careering down a dangerous snow slope without properly knowing how to ski – an incident, also from life, which is one of the best things in The Bell Jar. Suicide, in short, was not a swoon into death, an attempt “to cease upon the midnight with no pain”; it was something to be felt in the nerve-ends and fought against, an initiation rite qualifying her for a life of her own.”
“God knows what wound the death of her father had inflicted on her in her childhood, but over the years this had been transformed into the conviction that to be an adult meant to be a survivor. So, for her, death was a debt to be met once every decade: in order to stay alive as a grown woman, a mother and a poet, she had to pay – in some partial, magical way – with her life. But because this impossible payment involved also the fantasy of joining or regaining her beloved dead father, it was a passionate act, instinct as much with love as with hatred and despair.”
“…she spoke of suicide with a wry detachment, and without any mention of the suffering or drama of the act. It was obviously a matter of self-respect that her first attempt had been serious and nearly successful, instead of a mere hysterical gesture. That seemed to entitle her to speak of suicide as a subject, not as an obsession. It was an act she felt she had a right to as a grown woman and a free agent, in the same way as she felt it to be necessary to her development, given her queer conception of the adult as a survivor, an imaginary Jew from the concentration camps of the mind. Because of this there was never any question of motives: you do it because you do it, just as an artist always knows what he knows.”
Yet, if Alvarez was forced to choose a single motive it was undoubtedly loneliness. Another lonely figure was Ludwig Wittgenstein who famously wrote: “I am my world” (Ich bin meine Welt), which is as much an expression of his well-documented loneliness as it is of his solipsism.
Wittgenstein wrote that to commit suicide one has to overwhelm oneself, something he simply couldn’t bring himself to do. One day while out walking, in a desperate emotional state, one of intense inner turmoil, a relative noticed the state he was in and talked to him until he’d returned to a degree of normality. His was not a happy family and one prone to self-destruction; the relative undoubtedly knew this unhappy fact. Of Wittgenstein’s five brothers three of them took their own lives.
If we are faced with a pandemic it is one of loneliness and its corollary: suicide. I don’t know of a single person who has actually died of Covid but in my immediate circle three I knew took their own lives shortly before the “pandemic” and in the circle of a friend: three took their own lives during the lockdowns.
I read that suicide has become so common in New Zealand that the government has changed the classification to one of “accidental death”. This might explain why so many governments are currently downplaying the impact of lockdowns and are even claiming that suicide rates have actually fallen. This is, to say the least, hard to believe.
“Sunny, driven and with a new engineering master’s degree in hand, Joshua Morgan was hopeful he could find a job despite the pandemic, move out of his mother’s house and begin his life,” The New York Times reported in March 2021.
“But as lockdowns in Britain dragged on and no job emerged, the young man grew cynical and self-conscious, his sister Yasmin said. Mr. Morgan felt he could not get a public-facing job, like working at a grocery store, because his mother, Joanna, had open-heart surgery last year, and Mr. Morgan was “exceptionally careful” about her health.”
“He and his mother contracted the coronavirus in January, forcing them to quarantine in their small London apartment for over two weeks. Concerned by things he was saying, friends raised the alarm and referred him to mental health services.”
“But days before the end of his quarantine last month, Mr. Morgan, 25, took his own life. “He just sounded so deflated,” his sister said of their last conversation, adding that he said he felt imprisoned and longed to go outside.”[1]
According to one report: “The lockdown stressors that may have triggered suicidal behaviours were identified as follows: psychological distress, relationship problems, financial difficulties, and extreme fear of the COVID-19 infection. While all age groups carried the risk of attempting suicide during the lockdown, patients with psychiatric disorders and women accounted for 69% and 65.5% of the cohort, respectively. Factors like hopelessness and depression were highly related to suicide attempts, as well as the statement of future intent to repeat the attempt, at 72.4% and 65.5% respectively. Almost two-thirds of the attempts made were serious, and many women felt unsafe in their own homes during the lockdown.”[2]
The CDC stated: “Beginning in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and response, which included physical distancing and stay-at-home orders, disrupted daily life in the United States. Compared with the rate in 2019, a 31% increase in the proportion of mental health–related emergency department (ED) visits occurred among adolescents aged 12–17 years in 2020. In June 2020, 25% of surveyed adults aged 18–24 years reported experiencing suicidal ideation related to the pandemic in the past 30 days.”[3]
In Australia: “In September 2020, among 1157 Victorians, one-third reported anxiety or depressive disorder symptoms, one-fifth reported suicidal ideation, and one-tenth reported having seriously considered suicide in the prior 30 days. Young adults, unpaid caregivers, people with disabilities, and people with diagnosed psychiatric or sleep conditions showed increased prevalence of adverse mental health symptoms.”[4]
In Nepal “The increasing number of infections and uncertainty induced a substantial fear and concern leading to stress and anxiety which was superimposed by lockdown restrictions, financial breakdown, lack of physical contact with other family members and friends. The consequences of pandemic and lockdown on socioeconomic, mental health, and other aspects of Nepalese society are immense. These alarming conditions may exacerbate the suicidal rate which is already high in our part of the world.”[5]
In the Netherlands: “Suicides rose significantly amongst Dutch people up to the age of 30 last year, particularly during the lockdown months of January, February and December. Figures published by a new body, the Commissie Actuele Nederlandse Suïcideregistratie, showed that an average of more than 20 young adults took their own lives each month last year, reports the Parool. But in January, February and December, the totals were more than 30 every month. According to a Cans breakdown provided to DutchNews.nl, suicides amongst people up to the age of 30 were classed statistically as ‘worrying’ in these three months, compared with the baseline rates measured between 2013 and 2019.”[6]
As was hopefully made clear at the very beginning of this essay: the question of suicide is a complex matter and cannot be reduced to lockdowns, economic worries, loneliness, or any other single factor. Each attempt to take one’s own life, each variant upon Hamlet’s: “Ah, I wish my dirty flesh could melt away into a vapour, or that God had not made a law against suicide. Oh God, God! How tired, stale, and pointless life is to me” (Hamlet 1.2. 130-134) is different, just as everyone, each a unique expression of universal consciousness as Russell Brand or David Icke would say, is special.
What can be said, with some degree of certainty, is that the trends which were already evident before the “Covid pandemic” have been exacerbated during the lockdowns. Ultimately it boils down to the simple fact that we are dependent upon social interactions, one of which is art. We are social animals and have social, emotional and spiritual needs which are just as necessary as our material ones. Social media and Zoom conference calls are simply no substitute for physical warmth and affection, self-isolation obviously a catastrophe while pernicious social distancing an evil curse.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/europe/suicide-self-harm-pandemic.html
[2]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34121981/
4https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395621003563?dgcid=author#
[5]https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250706
[6]https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/01/more-young-people-committed-suicide-in-lockdown-months-cans/