Suicide claimed more Japanese lives in October than 10 months from COVID

Tokyo – Many more Japanese people are dying from suicide, likely exacerbated by the economic and social repercussions of the pandemic, than from the COVID-19 disease itself. While Japan has handled its coronavirus outbreak much better than many countries, keeping deaths below 2,000 across the country, provisional statistics from the National Police Agency show suicides topped 2,153 in October alone. , marking the fourth consecutive month of increase.

To date, more than 17,000 people have committed suicide this year in Japan. Self-inflicted deaths in October increased by 600 per year, with female suicides, about a third of the total, exceeding 80%.

Women, who have primary responsibility for childcare, have suffered the brunt of job losses and insecurity from the pandemic. They are also more exposed to domestic violence, which help centers say has worsened here this year, as in the world.

Child suicides, although a much smaller share of the total, are also higher.

“We have to face reality seriously,” government spokesman Katsunobu Kato said this week, announcing increased efforts to counsel potential victims through suicide helplines and social media.

Yokohama-based psychiatrist Chiyoko Ueda, in an interview posted this week on a local news site, said mental health distress caused by COVID was evident in her clinic. Among the things she shared, patients told her, “My self-esteem is low because I worry about money; the situation of staying at home changed my life; my kids and I don’t get along.

Japan has struggling with high suicide rates for a long time and for complex reasons, but the overall numbers had trended downward this year, until they reversed course in July – perhaps when the initial positivity of the pandemic “we are all together ”has diminished, and the buffering impact of public subsidies has disappeared.

That month, Japan added an additional $ 10 million for suicide prevention, after $ 24 million was budgeted last spring.

Until this year, Japan had made steady progress in reducing suicides, which topped 34,000 in 2003. Guidance and response efforts improved Karoshi, or being worked to death, helped reduce suicides to around 20,000 last year – the lowest number since record keeping began in 1978.

While Japan still has the highest suicide rate among the world’s rich G-7 countries, at 16 per 100,000, it had hoped to keep making progress, with a goal of reducing it to 13 per 100,000. by 2026, a level comparable to other developed countries. .

The suicide rate in the United States, meanwhile, is on the rise, from 14 per 100,000 in 2018.

“A mental health epidemic”

Deteriorating mental health in Japan – which is reporting suicide data much faster than most countries – could prove to be a worrying harbinger of the pandemic’s insidious impact elsewhere.

Earlier this year, U.S. researchers warned that the pandemic could trigger 75,000 “deaths from despair”, arising from unemployment, lack of social contact and other stressors to mental health.

“We are in the in the middle of a mental health epidemic right now, and I think it will only get worse, ”Dr. Vivian Pender, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, recently told CBS“ Sunday Morning ”.

“Don’t you think the worst is over?” correspondent Susan Spencer asked.

“No, not at all. No, I think in a way the worst is yet to come, in terms of mental health. There will be immense grief and mourning for all the people lost, and opportunities lost, and lost dreams and hope people had. “

More than half (53%) of American adults said in a recent survey that their mental health had suffered because of the pandemic. Prescriptions for antidepressants increased by 14% after the initial outbreak.