Once again Arctic Bay has lost one of it’s young people to the scourge of suicide. A young man took his life late last night. Suicide is always a tragedy, and unfortunately it is a tragedy that repeats itself over and over and over again in the Arctic. I feel for the young man who felt that the problems of his life were so overwhelming that he felt no other way out. But suicide was a choice that he made, my heart really goes out to the people he hurt by making that choice, the people who loved him the most are the people who are most hurt by this, and they had no choice in what he did.
Nunavut has the highest rate of suicide in Canada (by far). While I’m trying to find more up to date statistics a study in 1996 showed an over all rate in Nunavut of 151 per 100,000. That works out to about 40 people every year in Nunavut. Conversely, the average rate in Canada for 1996 was 13 per 100,000, which means that someone from Nunavut is 10 times as likely to take his or her life as someone from the rest of Canada. Of course the vast majority of those taking their own lives in Nunavut are Inuit.
All of this of course begs the question why, and just as there is no real satisfactory answer why that young man chose to end his life last night, there is no really good answer as to why the rate is so high here. You hear reasons bandied about, such as the rapid change in culture, over crowded housing, lack of opportunities. None seem to offer an adequate explanation, and perhaps it is a combination of many factors. Perhaps there is a higher rate of clinical depression here, with of course the accompanying lack of resources for treatment. The threat of suicide is often used here to manipulate ("If you leave me I’ll kill myself.""If you charge me I’ll kill myself"."I don’t want to go camping, if you make me I’ll kill myself") I’m not sure if this is one of the causes, or one of the results of the high suicide rate. I do know that often someone will follow through with that threat.
Often relationship problems seem to be the trigger of suicides, last night was no exception. Someone once pointed out to me that perhaps people up here despair more when relationships fall apart, there being less opportunity to find someone else because of the small population. It made sense to me. But ultimately any one explanation falls short of answering "why?".
I don’t know why so many people make the choice to take their own lives, but I do know this. Suicide devastates communities, plunges people in to despair, spawns other suicides or attempts. There is not a person in this community that has not been touched by this devastation. Not one person who has escaped the pain of losing someone they love. More needs to be done to slow this down, our communities are drowning in pain.
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Well we know about the suicide all too well. We have had 5 men, all in their 20’s, early 30’s commit suicide in the last 10 months. In all 5 cases, alcohol was involved.
It is hard to get my mind around the numbers, let alone to begin to understand the pain from outside. Garth’s cousin served his first posting with the RCMP at Paulatuk, and his stories were grim. I went looking for a statement of the suicide rates as a percentage of deaths from all causes, and didn’t find it, but found a Nunavut Health and Social Services report, Our Words Must Come Back to Us, which gives a glimpse of the pain and struggle. There is a table in there that shows a rate among 15-19 year old males of 848 per 100,000 – that’s almost one in a hundred, every year. What a terrible toll. But I was very interested in the words from the communities about what must be done: people speaking out to one another, parents being there for their children, communities telling parents of their responsibilities to their children. Not easy to do, not easy to promote, but wise, I think.
It is startling the contrast in suicide rates and personal experience people have with suicide in the north compared to that in the south. Ask a class of students in the south if they have had a loved one who committed suicide and you might get one hand raised. Up here, you’re lucky if one hand stays down.
Teachers preach “choose life” messages in health class, we’re teaching kids to watch out for their friends, we’ve held marches, we’ve got in-school counsellors and we encourage kids to talk through their problems. It feels like suicide is such a normal part of life, an accepted horrible thing that many just let it go when they hear someone threaten. Maybe the kids feel powerless to stop it, and the adults don’t know how.
You are absolutely right, though, Clare. More needs to be done.