It might be thought perhaps that this incident represented ancient feeling and that a similar condition in the modern times would not have a corresponding effect. It so happens that something similar has been tried. In some of the cities of South Central Europe in which the suicide rate is almost the highest in the world, it was decided about a generation ago by the Church authorities of the towns that suicides would not thereafter be buried in the cemeteries near the bodies of those who died in the regular course of nature, but must be interred in a separate portion reserved for themselves. Strange as it may seem, just as in the case of the young women of Milesia, this proved a great deterrent to suicide. The suicide rate was reduced one-half the next year.
As a matter of fact, it only takes some reasonably forceful countervailing notion to set a train of suggestions at work that will prevent suicide. If those contemplating suicide are made acquainted with some of these curious facts we know, then the notion of suicide loses more than half its terrible [{720}] attraction by being stripped of all of its supposed inevitableness. Almost any motive that attracts attention, even apparently so small a thing as disgrace after death, makes these people realize the littleness and the cowardice of the act.
Favoring Factors.—Psychic Contagion.—A prominent factor in suicides that must constantly be borne in mind is the influence of example or, as we have come to call it learnedly in recent years, psychic contagion. It is discussed more in detail in the chapter on Psychic Contagion, but its place here must be emphasized. It has often been noted that certain peculiar suicides are followed by others of the same kind. If a special poison has been used, others obtain it and put an end to their lives in that way. Even such horrible modes of death as eroding the jugular vein by drawing the neck backward and forward across a barbed-wire fence have been imitated. If the story of jumping off a high building is told with lurid details, special care has to be taken in permitting unknown people to go up to the same place for some time afterwards. The imitative tendency is evidently a strong factor. Plutarch's story of the young women of Milesia brings this out, and it has been noted all down the centuries.
In any discussion of the prophylaxis of suicide the effect of newspaper descriptions of previous suicides must be looked upon as very important. The influence of suggestion of this kind on people who have been thinking for some time of suicide is very strong. There comes to them the impelling thought that the suicide's miseries are over and they wish they were with him. From the wish to the resolve and then to the deed itself are only successive steps when suggestion is constantly prodding the unfortunate individual. If we are going to reduce the suicide rate materially or, indeed, keep it from increasing beyond all bounds, this question must be squarely faced. Accounts of suicides are not news in the ordinary sense of the word and while they might find a place for legal and other purposes in a few lines of an obituary column, the present exploitation of them by the papers makes them a constantly recurring source of strong suggestion to go and do likewise. These suggestions come to persons already tottering on the edge of disequilibration in this matter, and it is like tempting children to do things that they know are wrong, but that look irresistibly inviting when presented under certain lights. The very fact that their death will produce a sensation and will give them so much space in the newspapers attracts many morbidly sensation-loving people. Physicians must work as much for this prophylaxis as we have for the prevention of infectious diseases.
Child Suicides.—Probably the worst feature of the suicide statistics of recent times in all countries is the great increase of self-murder among children. Arthur MacDonald in discussing the "Statistics of Child Suicide" [Footnote 56] has shown that there is a special increase of young suicides everywhere. In France there are nearly five times as many suicides at the end of the nineteenth century as there were at the beginning of it. In England there is almost as startling an increase. Though the statistics are not as well kept, child suicide has increased not only in proportion to the increase of suicide among adults, but ever so much more. In Prussia the condition is even worse.
[Footnote 56: "Statistics of Child Suicide," Transactions of American Statistical Association, Vol. X., pp. 1906-1907.]
The French child suicide rate is especially interesting and disheartening. In the Paris Thesis for 1906 Dr. Moreau discusses the subject of suicide among young people and shows how rapid has been the growth of the number of such suicides in the last 100 years. The first statistics available for the purpose that, in his opinion, are exact enough to furnish a basis for scientific conclusions, are from 1836 to 1840. Altogether during that period in France there were 92 suicides under the age of seventeen years, 69 of whom were boys and 23 girls. In 1895 this number had increased to such a degree that in a single year there were almost as many suicides (90) as there had been in five years, only fifty years before. In 1895 the proportion of suicides less than ten years of age was a little more than one in twenty of the total number of suicides in France. There are countries in Europe in which the suicide rate among such children is even higher than it is in France. In every country it has gone on increasing and the awful thing is that the suicide rate is increasing more rapidly among children than it is among adults, though among adults it doubles every twenty years.
Causes at Work.—The causes for the increase in suicide among children were pointed out even by Esquirol, the great French psychiatrist, nearly a century ago. They are the same to-day, only emphasized by the conditions of our civilization. He attributed it to a false education which emphasizes all the vicious side of life, makes worldly success the one object of life, does not properly prepare the child for constancy in the midst of hardships, nor make it appreciate that suffering is a precious heritage to the race, that has its reward in forming character and fixing purpose. He thought that there were two very serious factors for the increase of suicide among children not usually realized. They were in his time literature and the theater. He said: "When the theater presents only the triumphs of crime, the misfortunes of virtue, when the books that are in common circulation because of the low price at which they are issued, contain only declarations against religion, against family ties and duties towards our neighbor and society, then they inspire a disdain of life and it is no wonder that suicide rapidly increases even among the very young." He was commenting on the case of a child of thirteen who had hanged himself, leaving this written message: "I bequeath my soul to Rousseau and my body to the earth."
Cowardice of Suicide.—Of course, the strongest motive for dissuasion from suicide is the utter cowardice of the act. As a rule, the man who contemplates suicide is not a sufferer from inevitable natural causes, but one who for some foolish act has put himself into what seems to him an intolerable position out of which escape without disgrace is impossible, and he is afraid to face the consequences of his own acts. It is from the fear of mental worry and of the condemnation of others rather than from any dread of physical suffering and pain that men commit suicide. The suicide leaves those who are nearest and dearest to him to face the battle of life alone, with all the handicaps that have been created by their foolishness. Running away in battle is as nothing compared to the cowardice of the suicide. The deserter is deservedly held in deepest dishonor, and if there is some little pity for the suicide, it is because of the supreme foolishness of his act and the feeling that it only can have been dictated by some defect of mental equilibrium. A frank recognition of these conditions in their real significance probably will do more than anything [{722}] else to make the prospective suicide realize the true status of his act better than anything else.