Suicide, another public health problem

Suicide is a mystery to science. How can people have the courage to kill themselves, to hang themselves or take a lethal dose of drugs, while it violates the most powerful instinct that millions of years of evolution have we left?

This is not a morbid curiosity. The answer could be the key to dealing with a persistent public health problem: about 800,000 people commit suicide each year, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, the rate has been rising for two decades.

In his article on the psychology of evolution, David Buss of the University of Texas cites survey results that show that Suicidal thoughts correlate with the feeling of being a burden to others and especially in the case of men, few breeding prospects. For old people 70 years, suicidal thoughts are correlated with poor health or financial problems. However, there must be something more behind the few who are trying to commit suicide, because many people with the same problems and feelings do not.

In his book "Why people die by suicide" Thomas Joiner, psychologist at the University of Florida, explores the phenomenon from several angles: statistics, surveys, kamikaze pilots, suicide bombers and even forms of self-sacrifice in very sociable animals (bees, ants and rats) topo) . Joiner highlights that individuals who commit suicide are inconsiderate, whether naturally or because they have trained themselves to overcome fear.

Voltaire recognized him when he wrote about Roman orator Cato: "It seems absurd to say that Cato was killed by weakness, only a strong spirit can defeat the greatest instinct of nature."

Joiner's efforts to understand the problem are partly due to a personal connection with suicide. When Joiner was in graduate school, his father drove by car and he stabbed himself in the heart. His father, he says, was not a coward.

"People do not think about this aspect of suicide … but tend to think about it in an abstract way"said. When you stop to think about the details, the difficulty is very clear: logistics, fear and pain, instinct of conservation.

The Centers for Disease Control of the United States recently reported that, by category of employment, Suicide is highest among men in construction and mining: fields with high physical demands that can force people to get used to the wounds and face their fears. The rate has been constantly high among physicians of both bades, who may also be reckless or have learned to overcome their fears for example, to perform surgeries.

The despair and mental illness These are also factors, but many people live with these diseases and will not die by suicide. Joiner, however, says his study has revealed a trend. People who commit suicide often suffer from what he calls a lack of efficiencythey have lost a job or see themselves as professional failures. Frustrated membership is even more important: the lack or loss of close relationships with other people.

Evolutionary psychologists have argued that the latter problem represents a suicide risk given our nature of very social animals. Carpenter also examined. In a 2016 article published in the journal Psychological Review, he and his colleagues badyze self-sacrifice among the most intensely social animals on the planet.

Some bees are sacrificed by biting an animal that represents a threat. The mole rats face snakes – and are killed – to defend their colonies. Ants infected with a contagious fungus leave the colony and starve to death before mutually infecting each other.

By saving their companions from the colony, even if it means dying, these animals can allow the spread of their genes. Perhaps the social instincts of human beings pose a risk to our species, especially when people feel like a burden to their family. As the authors of this study point out, this species of extreme self-sacrifice, although adaptive in some animals, "This represents a tragic, deficient, erroneous and sometimes fatal calculation (a disorder) among modern human beings when acts are posed and posed in the context of a suicide."

For Joiner, those at risk of suicide constitute a small subgroup of people who suffer from a frustrated belonging, a lack of efficiency and a mental illness, and who are also reckless or have developed tolerance to fear and self harm.

Understanding suicide in this way does not glorify the act. It does not save lives by stigmatizing cowards or selfish people who commit suicide. Understanding the science of suicide in its most raw terms can help identify people at riskbut also highlight the means of Address your suffering.

In Mexico The National System of Support, Psychological Counseling and Crisis Intervention by Phone (SAPTEL) provides 24-hour telephone support at the following number: 0155 5259-8121. In the United States, you can dial + 1-888-628-9454.

At the center of suicide badistance Buenos Aires they contact any person in crisis on the free number 135 or (011) 5275-1135 24 hours a day. There is also the Center of Attention for the Family of Suicide (CAFS): Tel. (011) 4758-2554 ([email protected] – www.familiardesuicida.com.ar).

In United Statesthere is the National Suicide Prevention Network to call for help at 1-888-628-9454, you can call or call 1-800-273-8255, the National Preventive Service Line Suicide, to talk to someone who will support you Free and confidential 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If you want to know how to help a person in crisis, you can call the same number.