Chris Hedges: US Record Suicides Prove Economic Decline

Chris Hedges, author and host of RT America’s “On Contact” joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the skyrocketing problem of suicide and self-destructive behavior and why we should only expect it to get worse.

Spain Suicides Result of Economic Crisis
Moments before Ameia Egana, aged 53, was to be evicted from her fourth floor apartment, she clambered over the balcony railing and jumped to her death. Police at the scene said she died on impact. It is the second suicide in Spain in a matter of weeks; a man facing eviction in Grenada was found hanging in his home. A local judge called to the scene said the law on evictions must be changed. Al Jazeera's Peter Sharp reports.

Austerity Drives Up Suicide Rate in Debt-ridden Greece

Read the article here | Teo Kermeliotis, for CNN | Friday, April 06, 2012
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Boy, 14, Found Dead Over Gay Bullying
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A 14-year-old boy from New York, who warned in internet postings that he felt suicidal because of homophobic bullying, has been found dead outside his home.


Jamey Rodemeyer became the latest in a string of suicides by young Americans who had been abused or ridiculed because of their sexuality, in several cases over the internet.

Jamey, from Williamsville, complained that he was being viciously abused after talking online about his confusion over whether he was gay.

In May, he recorded a video message for the "It Gets Better" campaign, through which young gay people, along with celebrities and national figures such as Barack Obama, try to encourage each other to remain hopeful through difficult experiences.

"People would just keep sending me hate, telling me that gay people go to hell," he said in the recording, which was posted to YouTube.

Jamey, who had just began high school, received support from his parents, Tracy and Tim Rodemeyer, and went through counselling. Recently "he was saying how great school was going, how happy he was, his grades were great," his father told local television reporters.

But in retrospect, Mr Rodemeyer said, "he fooled everybody. He put on a brave face and I wish he wouldn't have." » | Jon Swaine, New York | Wednesday, September 21, 2011

France Telecom Executive Resigns after Employee Suicide Tally Rises to 24
THE GUARDIAN: Unions blame work-related stress for the deaths after many workers were forced to change jobs and relocate

The deputy chief executive of France Telecom has quit with immediate effect following the spate of suicides among its staff.

Louis-Pierre Wenes's departure comes less than a week after a France Telecom employee became the 24th since February 2008 to take his own life.

The telecoms firm announced this morning that Wenes had asked to be relieved of his duties, and that chief executive, Didier Lombard, accepted the request.

In recent weeks, France has been gripped by the series of suicides across the former state monopoly. Unions claimed workers are being driven to kill themselves by the pressure caused by a wide-ranging restructuring plan, under which many have been forced to change jobs and relocate. >>> Graeme Wearden | Monday, October 05, 2009

Why Are France Télécom Employees Committing Suicide?
TIMES ONLINE: A spate of suicides at France Télécom, most recently a young woman in Paris, has highlighted the country’s malaise

She sent an e-mail to her father to say that the keys to her flat were in her handbag on the desk and to ask him to feed Frimousse, her cat, and Zébulon, her rabbit. “I’m sorry that you have to receive this sort of message but I’m more than lost,” wrote Stéphanie, who was 32. “Je t’aime, papa”. By the time he read the e-mail she was dead, having thrown herself out of the window on the fourth floor of her office in the latest example of a phenomenon that is often airbrushed out of the clichéd image of France.

Sure, this is le beau pays, the country of wine and gastronomy, of leisurely lunches and stunning scenery, number one for the fourth year running in a recent international quality-of-life survey. But it is also a nation of doubt and anguish, consuming more antidepressants than any other and suffering from one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world.

The reason that Stephanie’s death shone light on to the dark side of the French psyche is that she worked for France Télécom — and that 22 other employees of the telecommunications group have killed themselves over the past 18 months. Most had gone unnoticed outside their home towns. Stéphanie did not. That she was [a] young woman, that she had killed herself in Paris, and that the list of suicides at the company was growing by the month transformed the personal tragedies into a national drama.

Unions accused the company of driving its staff to despair. President Sarkozy demanded action. And Didier Lombard, the chief executive, was forced to apologise for describing the deaths among his personnel as a “fashion”. But amid a frenzied debate, the more thoughtful commentators pointed out that the suicide rate among France Télécom’s 102,000 French employees was 15.3 a year — alarmingly high, but not significantly higher than the national rate of 14.7 for 100,000 people. It is France, not just France Télécom, that is gripped by morbid thoughts.

The French, for instance, are 1.9 times more likely to take their own lives than the Dutch, 2.8 times more likely than the Italians and 2.4 times more likely than the Spanish or the British. There are nations with worse rates — Finland, for example, where the practice is widely blamed on alcoholism, or Japan, which has historically been tolerant of suicide. But in wealthy Western Europe, France stands out, with at least 10,500 people ending their own lives last year.

How did they come to this point in what International Living, the US consultancy, described as “the world’s best country”? There are several possible factors — a sombre strain in French culture; high alcohol consumption; the absence of an organisation as efficient as the Samaritans is in the UK. But the explanation that is most widely voiced concerns the 6,000 people in the 30-to-60 age range who kill themselves every year and focuses on the Gallic relationship with work.

The French may sometimes be portrayed as shirkers, always happy to quit the office or the factory for an apéritif in the garden, but this is to miss an essential component of modern France, according to Christian Baudelot, professor of sociology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris: “The truth is that we are very attached to our jobs. More than almost anywhere else, people define themselves by their professions.” Ask an English builder to describe himself and he might well say that he is a Liverpudlian or a Geordie or a Manchester United supporter, according to Baudelot. “Here, he will say that he is a builder.”

Le travail is the cornerstone of modern France in other ways, too, Baudelot says. “In Italy and Spain, people rely on the family for solidarity. In the UK, there is both a cult of individualism where you are taught to get by on your own and a sort of primal neighbourhood solidarity — in the pub, for instance. France is different. People are taught to get by in groups and it is in the workplace where they seek the solidarity they need. The workplace is the cement of our society.” The cement, however, is cracking as unemployment and globalisation impose a competitive edge to the world of work. … >>> Adam Sage in Paris | Wednesday, September 23, 2009

US Military Veterans Committing Suicide in Increasing Numbers
TIMESONLINE: More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday.

At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.

Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 - an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.

The rate of suicides among veterans prompted claims that the US was suffering from a “mental health epidemic” – often linked to post-traumatic stress. America suffers an epidemic of suicides among traumatised army veterans (more)

Mark Alexander