Life trauma, Crisis, Depression

Such was the topic of the conference I went to on the weekend. The main topic underlying the somewhat tragic title was suicide, and suicide prevention. This was the first conference I went to, not counting the time when back in high school I came with Mum to Sydney to some sort of art history conference, but spent most of my time exploring Sydney and much less time being interested in all the presentations.

The conference was very interesting. There were a lot of different topics, and even one whole part dedicated to my two favourite topics of immigration and the elderly and the associated rate of suicide. Here are some (what I think) interesting facts that I took away with me:

GENDER DIFFERENCES

• women are 2-3 times more at risk of depression than men
• every 5th man, and every 3rd woman will suffer from depression at least once in their life
• men have a 3 times higher suicide rate than women
• women have 3 times higher rate of suicide attempts than men
• preventative programs (against suicide) work on about 90% of women, but almost never on men
• marriage or having a loving partner works as a protective mechanism against depression and suicide for men (that's why a lot of men can't get over the loss of their partners - rate of suicide amongst older men is much higher than in older women - see below), but for women, children (not partner) seem to be that protective mechanism
  

ELDERLY

• older men (men over 60 y.o.) have a 5 times higher rate of suicide than same aged women
• only 7% of people who call crisis hotlines are people over 60 y.o.
• out of 9402 suicides in Germany in 2008, 3993 were by people over 60 y.o. (2790 men, 1203 women)- that's almost 43% - however the number of preventative programs for older people is significantly less than for younger people, because suicide amongst the elderly is more accepted than that in young people
• the rate of suicide dramatically increases after 80 y.o.
• flexibility to changing life circumstances, acceptance of help, social support systems play a protective role

DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE

• in all people who get depression, in 85-100% it is likely to reoccur at some point in their lives
• of all people who get depressed, 12% have depression that lasts longer than 2 years
• out of all people who commit suicide, 60% suffered from depression (perhaps not so surprising... the interesting thing would be to look at the other 40% and see what was the underlying condition there)
• people with unipolar depression are more at risk of getting cardiovascular diseases
• people who have bipolar depression have a higher rate of diabetes than in general population
• 50% of people with anxiety disorders develop depression
• 340 million of people in the world suffer from depression

IMMIGRATION AND SUICIDE

• after immigration, the risk of suicide dramatically increases 10 years after arrival
• according to WHO, in Russia, 70.6 men (per 100 000 people) commit suicide, compared to 11.9 women (compared to 21.2 men, 5.1 women in Australia; and 20.2 men, 7.3 women in Germany)
• amongst migrants the rate of suicide is much higher in the second generation migrants than in the first
• in Germany the highest rate of suicide is amongst young Turkish women
• in Berlin, 23.45% of total population are migrants... out of these 40.7% are under 18 y.o.
• education seems to be one of the more important protective factors against suicide - along with religion, tradition, family and being able to speak the local language
• the rate of suicide amongst migrants reflects the rate of suicide in the country of origin (ie. the rate of suicide amongst Russian migrants in Germany reflects the rate of suicide in Russia)

YOUTH AND SUICIDE

• in Germany, 10% of young men, and 20% of young women have suicidal thoughts
  
• 10.1% of young men and 19.9% of young women physically harm themselves (eg. cut their arms, etc.)
• in 90% of cases of physical harm, suicidal thoughts, or suicide attempts, the parents have no idea
• in the USA, suicide is the most common cause of death amongst 10-19 y.o.

The very first presentation was about a British singer and songwriter Nick Drake, who committed suicide when he was 26. If you don't know his music (and to my shame I didn't before this presso), it's amazingly good :)