Psychological Problems of Suicide
In some of its aspects, suicide raises psychological questions which bristle with difficulties, but which, nevertheless, pique the curiosity and demand explanatory answers. Why, for example, is the rate of suicide strictly dependent everywhere upon season and weather? Why is the tendency to self-destruction lessened by war? What is the explanation of suicide in the face of impending death, when there is still a fair chance of escape, or when the natural death that is threatened would involve less suffering than the act of self-destruction? What is the mental state of the hundreds of persons who kill themselves every year upon what would seem to be absurdly inadequate provocation—of the man, for example, who commits suicide because his wife declines to get out his clean underclothes, or the woman who takes poison because she has received a comic valentine? In its religious aspect, why is the tendency to suicide greatest among Protestant Christians and least among Mohammedans and Jews? In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million? Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration, long after their environment has completely changed? These questions may not have great practical importance, but, from the view-point of the psychologist and the sociologist, they are full of speculative interest.
When we study the phenomena of suicide as
they appear in the light of statistics, we are struck by the fact that among the general and world-wide conditions that limit or control the suicidal impulse are weather and war. Other factors, such as education, religion, or economic status, may seem to be more influential, if observation be limited to a single nation or a single continent; but if a comprehensive survey be made of the whole world, weather and war will be seen to take a prominent place among the few agencies that affect uniformly the suicidal tendency.
As soon as accurate and trustworthy statistics of self-destruction became available in Europe, sociologists began to study the question whether suicide is controlled or regulated in any way by natural laws, and, if so, whether cosmical causes, such as climate, temperature, season, and weather, have any perceptible influence upon the suicide rate. It was soon discovered that the tendency to self-destruction is greatest in the zone lying between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth parallels of north latitude. South of forty-three degrees the annual suicide rate is only 21 per million, and north of fifty-five degrees it is only 88 per million; but between the parallels of forty-three and fifty it rises to 93 per million, and between fifty and fifty-five it reaches its maximum of 172 per million. The suicide belt, therefore, lies in the north temperate zone, where the climate is most favorable to human development and happiness. This fact, however, does not prove that a moderate and equable climate predisposes to suicide. Things may coexist without being in any way related to each other, and the frequency of suicide in the north temperate zone may be due wholly to the fact that the zone in question is the home of the most cultivated races and the seat of the highest and most complicated civilization. In this zone the struggle for life is fiercest, the interference with natural laws is most extensive, and the physical and emotional wear and tear of the economic contest is most acutely felt. It is more than probable, therefore, that the high rate of suicide in the north temperate zone is due to the civilization, rather than to the climate, of that region. This phase of the subject need not be discussed at length, because all competent authorities agree that climate, in its relation to suicide, is not a controlling or determining factor.
A very different state of affairs appears, however, when we bring the suicide rate into correlation with season and weather. Long ago, before accurate statistics made a scientific investigation of the subject possible, there was a widely prevalent popular belief that dark and dismal months of the year, and gloomy, rainy, or uncomfortable weather, predisposed mankind to self-destruction, and that the suicide rate was highest in November or December, and lowest in spring or early summer.
Spring and Summer the Suicide Seasons
The French philosopher Montesquieu went so far as to explain the supposed frequency of suicide in London by connecting it with English rains and fogs. It was only natural, he argued, that unhappy people should kill themselves in a country where the autumnal and winter months were so dark, and where there was so much gloomy, depressing weather. When, however, investigators began to study the subject in the light of accurate statistics, when they grouped suicides by months and compared one month with another, they were surprised to find that the tendency to suicide was greatest, not in the gloomy and depressing months of November and December, but in the bright and cheerful month of June. In 1898 Dr. Oscar Geck, of Strasburg, published statistics of about 100,000 suicides that took place in Prussia in the twenty-year period between 1876 and 1896. They showed that, so far at least as Prussia was concerned, suicides invariably attained their maximum in June and their minimum in December. There was a constant rise in the suicide curve from January to the end of June, and a constant decline from June to the end of the first winter month.
Durkheim, of Paris, and Dr. Gubski, of St. Petersburg, who are among the most recent investigators of the subject, assert that, so far as the seasonal distribution of suicides is concerned, the figures for Prussia hold good throughout Europe. June is everywhere the suicide month, and December is everywhere the month in which self-destruction is least frequent. Durkheim gives tabulated statistics for seven of the principal countries of Europe, which show conclusively that, in point of predisposing tendency to suicide, the four seasons stand in the following order: summer first, spring second, autumn third, and winter last.[17] Even in Russia, which differs most from the rest of Europe in ethnology and economic status, the seasonal distribution of suicides
is the same. Dr. Gubski's statistics show that of every thousand Russian suicides, 328 take place in summer, 272 in spring, 215 in autumn, and 185 in winter. If we divide the year into halves, and group the suicides in semi-annual periods, we find that 600 occur in the pleasant spring and summer months and only 400 in the gloomy months of winter and fall.