NZ suicide stats skyrocket

21
1

the-end
NZ suicide stats highest ever recorded

Provisional suicide rates have broken a grim new record in New Zealand having reached their highest level since they were first recorded.

New statistics released by Chief Coroner Judge Deborah Marshal today show 564 people committed suicide in the 2014/15 year. The suicide statistics were first recorded in 2007/08.

The suicide rate per 100,000 however, dropped below the 2010/11 and 2011/12 years to 12.27 compared to 12.65 and 12.34 respectively.

Judge Marshal says it is disappointing the number of suicides this year is 35 higher than last year.

“Over the last eight years I believe we’ve seen a shift in society’s preparedness to have a more open conversation about suicide, but we are not seeing any movement in what is an unfortunate static annual figure,” she says.

Preventing suicide involves all New Zealanders and Judge Marshal acknowledged the greater effort being put into it by the likes of the Ministry of Health’s recently launched toolkit for District Health Boards and the trial Suicide Mortality Review Committee.

The horror of our suicide rate gives us a glimpse behind the ‘she’ll be right’ veneer of our culture and the dark torment of an alpha male macho mental landscape that is terribly fragile. Beyond the gated communities and success of booming property, there is a black splinter that pierces the soul of the NZ psyche that we refuse to raise for fear of what it will reveal.

Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our toxic masculinity, our unspoken rape culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger – all of this demands questions we don’t want to hear as a society and the shame of suicide continues to hide and smother any healing.

297 people died on NZ roads in 2014, 564 people took their own lives in that time.

We spend millions on road safety based on the premise that the road toll is a public health issue yet we don’t put any of that effort or political will into a suicide rate that dwarfs our road toll. Why? Because politicians don’t want the answer as to why so many of our fellow citizens decide to end their life in this supposed ‘gods own’.

We are is in denial about our depression, pain and suicide as we are about climate change and poverty.

Look at the mentality of the National Government who at one stage in 2010 tried to not allow funeral costs for the families of suicide victims because, as Nick Smith put it, ‘suicide is not an accident’. That cruelty mirrored Nick Smith trying to deny rape victims any counselling by defining rape as an ‘acute event’ rather than a mental illness.

We have a right wing Government who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

We huddle frightened on these lonely grey crags at the end of a jagged world and slowly one by one slip off into the swallowing dark. Until we are prepared to confront many of the individualism-over-all myths and rebuild our tattered communities, our suicide rate will continue to eclipse the sun, bleakly reminding us of our whispered deceptions.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

 

21 COMMENTS

  1. Horrible stats indeed. And yes, it doesn’t say much for the “great Kiwi Lifestyle,” anymore than our ongoing problems with alcohol consumption does.
    But I have to disagree with you on one point, Martyn. “We have a right wing Government who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

    If they really DID know the real price of:
    “Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our toxic masculinity, our unspoken rape culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger,” etc,
    they would be fighting to prevent it big time. But, like they have repeatedly proven beyond reasonable doubt, they just don’t care.

  2. yeah nah eh bro, all good, but it is not even remotely good for too many

    it is bittersweet watching my son grow up knowing comparatively I had it way better in the 70s and 80s, education, paywise and funwise, though I enjoy the digital technology part of modern life

    the futurist predictions of primary school years about the 21st century have only delivered the dystopic part not the sky cars or the end of wage slavery

    the dark settler rump are still in denial about enduring post colonial fall out, kids get shit pay and thumping great student debts imposed by people that had free tertiary–so we need a NZ revolution as much as ever–but in the meantime every one of us can do something about at least one thing on Martyn’s list

    • it is clear we must look after our young people …and those who are vulnerable..it is not hard to see who they are

      ….we need politicians who see the need first and foremost to create a caring nurturing society for the young and vulnerable of New Zealand

  3. I made a suicide attempt, nearly worked. It was triggered by giving up smoking. Smoking costs 66% of my benefit, and is 70% tax. Giving up sent me into a bleak depression, accompanied by the (delusional?) thoughts that my family would be relieved of a burden, and wouldn’t really grieve such an insignificant loss anyway. Have been able to maintain smoking since then due to a small inheritance, but am getting into debt now. Won’t be long till squeezed into that corner again. Can’t work, mentally ill, including Bipolar Disorder.

    • @DAPHNE try listening to some of the audios of Kryon.com or the YouTube videos of Whoneedslight.org while you suck on Habitrol lozenge. First are good for the soul and give you an idea of why you are on the Plant at this time, and the second suggestion is good for the wallet.

    • Daphne I spent 17 years trying to give up smoking. I smoked for 27 years. So I enjoyed it for 10 years. Get a copy of Allen Carr’s Easy Way to stop smoking off trade me. Just persevere with it even if it takes years to read it all through. It works! trust me.It is empowering.

  4. NatZ & the Shonkey Government has never included the people in any formulation of their policies.

    Don’t even ask for their opinions any more except when they rig the voting system so we are left powerless and that breeds depression and hopelessness for the majority who have no way out here.

    This Government has blood on its hands.

  5. ” We have a right wing Government who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. ”

    A brilliant quote @ Martyn Bradbury. I will use that and will, of course, give you credit.

    I’m surprised the Neo Liberals ( and you fucking know who you are) can hold on to our money so tightly, what with so much of our blood on their hands.

    The callous pretence that is road safety hysteria versus suicide ? One is useful to leverage up insurance company profits, the other is not. And I wonder how many people used cars to ‘off’ themselves? That particular method is know in the USA as auto-side. If I’m correct, it’s to side step insurance claim refusal issues for surviving family members.
    What a wondrous world the twin sideshow monkeys jonky and clark sold us out into.

    The National party followers and members are swine. Neo liberalism is a macabre aberration of reality. And if people suicide as a means of dealing with their sense of hopelessness? Then what have we become? Perhaps having been deliberately emotionally disconnected then parasitised of ones time on this earth vis-à-vis ones money? If I was a God botherer I might be forgiven for thinking that, that is evil. Truly evil.

    Here’s a quote for you. ” Evil prevails when good people fail to act . ” Edmund Burke .

  6. The breakdown of the Mental Health Services have left a lot of people very vulnerable especially with the high levels of unemployment and social dysfunction these days.

  7. New Zealand is becoming a very cold and paranoid place where information warfare is now considered normal. Almost all sources of information and news has an agenda which is designed to shape opinion and thus culture. Facts are ammunition to be selectively fired rather than assembled, presented and judged. We call it bias but it’s really just disingenuous … a lie This behaviour while being universal in scope, is actually psychopathic.

    Those influenced (which is almost everybody) suffer from a macrosocial dynamic of transmarginal inhibition, which describes how the disconnect between themselves and their values clash with the imposed consensus reality they get bludgeoned round the head with every day though the media.

    These sparring reality creators have actually had a big hand to play in creating this very dynamic, because they have helped create a social climate which is at odds with our value system as a species, by targeting vulnerable minorities through social welfare policy, by constant ad hominem attack via the media purely to discredit, by a flood of immoral behaviour from traditional role models as seen in the Dirty Politics saga. All of this goes largely unopposed, even cheered from the sidelines. You can even win an award for it. I doubt many are even disturbed any more by statistics such as this, because any perceived as below their station are their enemies, while those above looked up to and admired, regardless of their behaviour.

    None of this resonates with our core human values and we’re being stripped of our humanity day by day … largely by the very avenues we look to for answers – a kind of weird form of Stockholm syndrome. Nothing will change until we rid ourselves of those deliberately shaping our culture in this most hideous fashion. It bottoms out at moral bankruptcy and has opened the door to almost anything, providing the reality-shaped consensus approves. Without this critical change we’re not looking good for the future, and can look to the USA as our crystal ball. As the egalitarian society we once prided ourselves on fades in the rear-view mirror, the view ahead should be a real concern to all New Zealanders, because arresting the descent is hard. Clawing back the conditions that require it, is rapidly becoming mission impossible.

    • Yep, you are so right abut the crap media we now have, that is most of it, there are still some humble exceptions. But listening to motor mouth Duncan Garner on his “Live Road Show” every afternoon, it makes you sick. He has completely jumped onto the US American way of presenting “news” along the line of the roaming or “dashing” live reporter, first at the scene, to report the blood and guts or burnt home scenario first hand.

      Today (Wednesday, 07 Oct.) he encouraged people calling in who were witnessing bush and house fires near Mosgiel, and many did, also sending pictures from their smart phones. There there are other such events, where he stirs people up, and encourages them to call him and present their OPINIONS. It is so much about opinions and his and other people’s VIEWS, and no analysis, no dissection of news events, no cause and effect reporting.

      Sadly it seems, the Twitter and Facebook and Instagram using members of the public love following such “news” and play the game.

      So any news about suicides just goes under, it is just a tiny bit of a blip of “news”, that is drowned by all the rest of endless chain reporting, of trivial and not so trivial happenings, all just mentioned, but never analysed and properly digested. We are becoming a nation of totally desensitized “idiots”, falling for nothing but hype and self indulgence. People with human needs, like a need to belong, to live as part of a culture, they are not part of all this, so sadly some hit crisis point.

      Something needs to be done urgently, to put more resources into mental health services, like the community services, that are under-resourced all over the place, same as addiction treatment services. It is a disgrace that people put consumerist selfishness first, and then vote governments in, that give them tax cuts, to spend more on that, while forgetting the weaker persons in the community.

    • I just listened to Radio Live, and Duncan Garner play a police press announcement, on the death of ten year old Alexander, who had been missing for 3 days. Then Garner commented that the police expected the media and public to respect the privacy of the family and not go near them.

      So he played that bit of “moral” bit, but right after the announcement, the station started one of the endless runs of aggressive advertisements, for people to buy this that and the other.

      That is the “values” of this country, under this government, and with the disrespectful crap media we have. Truth is the media have NO honest respect for much at all. Re the running of commercials, they do the same on ANZAC Day, Waitangi Day, Good Friday, Christmas, Easter and so forth, there is only a very brief interruption then of running ads, but for most of the time, they are pre-occupied with promoting ruthless commercialism, consumerism and self gratification, that walks over the lives of the more sensitive, culture and nurture hungry members of our society.

      In view of this I am not surprised at the statistics.

      The only “value” this country has left is the big dollar bill, greed, self gratification and endless competition for who gets there first.

  8. Well, with the way this country is going, and with the draconian welfare reforms that were introduced from as early as 2010, but that culminated into the “relentless focus” on work approach being introduced in mid July 2013, I would not be surprised, if that increase in suicides, does to some degree also have something to do with “welfare reforms” and WINZ making life damned hard for some.

    Especially people with mental health issues seem to be struggling with the treatment that is dished out. And today (Tuesday), we had another “armed incident” in Christchurch, I heard.

    Add the poor mental health services, where some people I know cannot find the affordable specialist treatment they urgently need, all this does not surprise me one bit.

    The following post found under this link may reveal some of what goes on:

    https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/how-the-n-z-health-and-disability-commissioner-let-off-a-biased-designated-doctor/

    • re ” “relentless focus” on work approach”

      ….it would be far better to give all kids leaving school and all unemployed who are willing …a paid internship… in some field of their choice… to see how they like it and whether they would like to follow it up with further training as a possible career eg it could plumbing or journalism or nursing …etc etc ( of course they would be paid a student allowance in training)

      they do this in countries like Germany…young people feel cared for by society ( unlike New Zealand)

  9. Geez, these suicide figures are going to set off the leftie media.
    No worries – usual flannel: complex problem, we’re doing what we can, spending on health is up etc etc – besides, do suicides vote?
    Well no, they’re dead.
    My point exactly, next.

  10. Really Coroner Marshall?? Really. I emailed her yesterday after reading what she said and asked her if they really do want to do something why is one of her own coroners desperately trying to deny me an Inquest into the death of my 15 year old son. An Inquest would bring to light the horrific systemic failures within our mental health system and if some things were changed, it could save lives. My son didn’t just fall through the cracks, he was thrown into the black chasm of what passes for our mental health system. Could this be the very reason why they have tried to deny him justice? To cover up even more abuse and incompetence. I have been working bloody hard to get him an Inquest, next month it will be THREE YEARS since he died.

  11. My sister was taken to ***** Hospital after police burst into her house where she was trying to hang herself and cut her down .

    FOUR hours later – at about 4 in the morning she was ‘released’ from the hospital – by herself – after staff determined she was ok and she had ” assured them she wouldn’t do it again ” .
    She walked home alone , across the city, on a cold winter’s night, to the same house where the ladder and rope were still in place .

    She hung herself a week later.

    FUCK this Govt and it’s underfunding of Mental Health facilities and FUCK previous Govts for the same thing.

Comments are closed.