Aftermath, Inc. by Gil Reavill

Author:Gil Reavill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2007-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

From studies by psychiatric academics, we know quite a bit about suicide. Generalities about gender, for example: that men tend to use guns and women pills, or that men complete suicide at a rate higher than women, but women attempt suicide more often than men.

As one would expect, Monday is the prime day for suicide. Less explicable is that Tuesday has the lowest rate (all the gloom got sucked up by Monday?). There is a peak in the spring (April is the cruelest month) and a lesser one in September. Late afternoon, from 4:00 to 6:00 P.M., are the witching hours, actually better and, in this context, more ironically known as Happy Hour. The fourth through the sixth of every month are the favored dates. Astrological signs do not correlate to rates of attempt or completion. Capable as always, firstborns complete more often.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no spike in the suicide rate on Christmas, although the rate of attempts rises slightly on New Year’s Day. People don’t commit suicide any more often on their birthdays.

There is also no rise in suicide rates on Super Bowl Sunday, during the final game of the World Cup or seventh game of the World Series, but the rate dropped in Scotland for four years after the Scottish team was in the Cup. Athletes involved in club sports commit suicide less often when compared to the general population.

We know that of all countries in the world Hungary has the highest suicide rate, and Hungarian immigrants have elevated rates when compared to other immigrant groups. Communist and Socialist voters in European elections have higher rates, capitalists lower. In the UK, suicides drop after a Labor victory and rise after a Conservative victory. Suicide rates in October and November 1929, around the time of the “Black Tuesday” stock market crash, were the same as those in January, February, and September of that year, belying the widely held image of defenestrating stockbrokers.

Physicians (especially female doctors and psychiatric specialists) and pharmacists have elevated rates, while dentists and nurses have average rates. Rates of farmers and foresters are higher than truckers. Rates of police are second highest of all professions, behind only psychiatrists (physician, heal thyself).

We know other odd, mostly gender-related differences. In cases of suicide by burning, men tend to pour flammable liquid on themselves and light it, while women tend to walk into already-burning flames; men more often shoot themselves in the head, women in the torso. Male jumpers leap from greater heights than female ones. Men, uncommunicative brutes that they are, don’t leave as many suicide notes as women. Males with tattoos are more likely to use guns as their method of choice, and brown-eyed males are more likely to use hanging or poison.

Some suicide studies slice the demographic pie a bit thin: Self-poisoners in Sri Lanka, for example, do not exhibit gender differences when they choose between rat poison or agrochemicals. Other studies provide eureka moments. From the 1970s on, when emission standards cut the amount of carbon monoxide in car exhaust, that method of suicide drastically declined.

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