Suicide in Multicultural Societies

Sep 09, 2011 Editorial

Tomorrow, September 10, is World Suicide Prevention Day. While most Guyanese still have a perception of suicide as individual reactions to personal problems, the fact that one million persons take their lives every year across the world (WHO figures) indicates that the phenomenon is a social one. In fact, the observations of Emile Durkheim on the rate of suicide among different religious communities in 19th century France, was a seminal event in the foundation of sociology.
In Guyana, suicide is a major problem. A host of studies, collecting data by different methodologies, have confirmed that approximately two hundred Guyanese take their own lives annually. One interesting fact that has emerged from these studies is that the majority of suicide victims are male, and suicide is the major cause of death among young people between the ages of 15-35. Another is the rate of suicide varies tremendously among the several ethnic groups that constitute our society. For instance, Indians form about eighty percent of suicide victims and the Hindu sub-group constitute three-quarters of this number.
This correlation between suicide rates and ethnic/religious/cultural backgrounds that triggered the first study by Durkheim has been shown to hold true for all societies. This observation has led to the International Association for Suicide Prevention to designate the theme for this year’s activities as: “Preventing Suicide in Multicultural Societies”.
As the association has noted: “This year’s theme aims at raising awareness of the fact that all countries in the world are multicultural…Multicultural societies require cultural sensitivity in all suicide prevention efforts.”
However, we cannot make a simplistic inference of causation from the observed fact of the correlated data. “A common mistake is to treat culture as something objective that explains differences.
When we find differences between cultural groups in a society, e.g. suicide rates and risk factors, we tend to explain these in terms of cultural differences. This can, however, conceal the real reasons for differences that may or may not have something to do with culture at all.
Examples of other factors that may be important are unemployment, poverty, oppression, marginalisation, stigmatisation, or racism. Moreover, culture is not a static or measurable
variable; rather culture describes the dynamics evolving in an interaction between individuals and their surroundings. So, at the same time as we need to be culturally sensitive and aware of potential cultural differences, we must not let “culture” overshadow other important factors that might be at play. Neither must we overlook similarities in our vigilance to find differences.”
In a caution that bears great relevance for dealing with the scourge of suicide in Guyana, the association points out: “Risk factors for suicide vary across cultural groups. Knowledge about common risk factors in a society often stems from research in majority populations. However, in a multicultural context we need to be aware that some risk factors may play different roles in the suicidal process as
well as in suicide prevention for some minority groups compared to the majority population.”
For instance, in Guyana, risk factors for elderly alcoholic men may have little or nothing to do with young rural females from Region Six. “In addition, other factors that might have a different impact on minorities compared to the majority population are attitudes towards suicidal behaviour and suicidal people (e.g. taboo, stigma), religion and spirituality, and family dynamics (gender roles and responsibilities).
Studies have shown that stereotyping might be common in the health and social care system in dealing with minority groups. Therefore, we need to be careful to distinguish between how the rules and traditions of a cultural group define how members of that group may or should behave and how individuals from a cultural group actually do behave. We must not let stereotypes rule what we perceive or do.”
In terms of the Suicide Prevention programme that the government has initiated within the last decade (and which we shall review in a subsequent editorial) the association cautions:” The strategy/program is often aimed at the majority population and a specific cultural perspective or focus is missing.”

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