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Suicides rule high in Japan

Justin McCurry

Government measures fail to cut a rising rate in the land of hara-kiri

33,093 people killed themselves in 2007
Depression identified as the main factor

Tokyo: Almost a hundred Japanese killed themselves every day last year, according to figures released on Thursday, dealing a blow to a government campaign to reduce the suicide rate by 2016.

A total of 33,093 people killed themselves in 2007, up 3 per cent from 2006 and the 10th year in a row that the number has exceeded 30,000, the national police agency said. The figure is the second highest after the 34,427 recorded suicides in 2003.

Depression was identified as the main factor in around a fifth of cases, followed by physical illness and debt. The number of elderly people who killed themselves rose 9 per cent from a year earlier as Japan grapples with a rapidly ageing society and rising poverty among pensioners.

People aged over 60 made up the biggest individual group of victims, rising to a record high of 36.6 per cent of the total, the agency said.

Among the elderly

More than half the elderly suicides were connected with ill health, but a sizeable number were due to financial pressures, the report said.

“I think the number will continue to rise as more elderly people find themselves isolated and struggling financially,” a counsellor at Inochi no Denwa, Japan’s biggest telephone counselling service, said. “Their traditional support mechanisms — the welfare state and extended families — are under threat, so I’m very pessimistic.”

Japan’s senior citizens, who now make up more than a fifth of the population, have been hit hard by the pensions squeeze and healthcare reforms designed to rein in public spending.

The statistics make grim reading for health officials, who last summer unveiled a $220 million package of measures, including better counselling and stricter monitoring of suicide websites, that were designed to cut the suicide rate by more than 20 per cent over 10 years.

Cultural stigma

Yuzo Kato, director of the Tokyo Suicide Prevention Centre, dismissed the government target as meaningless, and said more should be done to end the cultural stigma attached to mental illness.

“Health professionals are not interested in suicides unless they are psychiatrists, so patients are very unlikely to discuss their problems with their general practitioner,” he said. “Japan’s national character is such that people are socially conditioned to hide their pain, to avoid troubling others by opening up.”

Yamanashi prefecture’s suicide rate, at 39 people in every 100,000, was the worst in the country. The area is home to Aokigahara, an ancient forest at the foot of Mount Fuji and the country’s most notorious suicide spot.

United Nations figures show that 24 in 10,000 people kill themselves in Japan, almost double the rate in the United States, which has twice its population. Among the G8 group of rich countries only Russia has a higher rate. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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