We describe NZ Suicide as ‘stubbornly high’ but never talk about our cultural denial
New suicide prevention action plan released amid ‘stubbornly high’ rates
Decreasing a “stubbornly high” suicide rate is the central motivation behind the Government’s latest national suicide prevention plan.
The plan, released today by Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey, details how Health New Zealand and other agencies across government seek to address a persistent and inequitable rate of suicide that leads to about 600 deaths per year.
“Last year, 617 people died by suspected suicide,” Doocey said in a statement.
“Behind that number are grieving families, friends, colleagues, and communities.”
We always describe NZ Suicide as ‘stubbornly high’ but never talk about our cultural denial do we?
We don’t have a youth problem in NZ, we have an adult problem.
NZ hates young people.
We screamed ‘something just be done’ during ram raids, that ‘something; was criminalising children, holding them in dangerous facilities and graduating them to jail as quickly as possible.
NZ hates young people.
The horror of our suicide rate gives us a glimpse behind the ‘she’ll be right’ facade of our culture and the dark torment of an alpha male macho mental landscape that is terribly fragile.
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 damaged masculinity, the intergenerational consequences of colonialism, our unspoken rage 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.
In a society that has no religious faith and all the cultural maturity of a can of coke, the bonds which keep us attached are frail and disconnected. In our fetishisation of individualism we have lost the central part of the human condition – connection.
We have traded in our interwoven threads of whanau, friendship and kin for a race where no one wins.
The reason we can’t talk about suicide is because we can’t stand to talk about the dark treacle of self hate and loneliness at the core of consumer culture. We don’t dare confront the hollowness of our existence on these far flung crags of rock for fear of what we will reveal about ourselves.
Damaged individuals competing for a self identity too fragile for the storms and tempests of life.
Thanks to neoliberalism, we are further from each other than ever before.
Look at the manner in which our suicide rates jumped after the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, where we moved away from the communal towards the individual…
…we huddle frightened on these lonely rocks at the end of the 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 remain reminding us of our whispered deceptions.
We refuse to ask the why of suicide because we are too frightened to know the answer is a reflection of the shallow and lonely community we have become. Instead we reel off a list of phone numbers whenever we dare mention suicide as if that means a fucking thing.
We are broken and no one wants to admit that.
NZ hates hate young people.
That’s why we have the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD.
That’s why this Government will achieve nothing.
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Check out Archives New Zealand newsreels from the 1950s and 1960s on YouTube, and you will find that they are full of announcements of what was being done to make life easier for New Zealand’s young people, who were predominantly Pākehā boomers at the time.
For instance, this one, https://youtu.be/Gj7tTDHH8oE, which exclaims that that “Only an intensive building programme now can provide for the future! Children, the citizens of tomorrow, must also have their chance!”
Thereafter, of course, the drawbridge would be pulled up.
Thatcherism Reaganism neoliberalism a nation Rogered. No economic security. Young people told the economy or society is not interested to make a place for them no matter their circumstance.
Compete in a rigged game.
It’s just a statistic! Who now knows the difference between final relinquishment of life and daily prevention of living as a real experience, instead being received images and words, gradually falling away to dullness and oblivion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VejTwFjwVI
Giuseppe Verdi – Nabucco – Hebrew Slaves Chorus 5.15m
We are weary and sad too, just like the Jewish. They are not the only ones to suffer because of our human depths of amoral maliciousness that strike at intervals.
Afterwards we can gather in sentimental audiences and listen to a sad poignant opera about it.
But we haven’t got the nous or guts to establish a way of life that has freedom and respect for each individual and from one to another, with reasonable tolerance and refraining from outbursts of anger and desire, greed and destruction of the basics of life; to be individuals co-operating in a thoughtful society with laughter at our own shortcomings rather than that of others.
I have got to know a person descended from the Polish children given refuge here from WW2 destruction. I also have an old book setting out The New German Order for Poland showing the Nazi behaviour there. Not long ago really. And we still can’t run a fair, happy civil society or a balanced, worldwide one. What next then?
https://genius.com/Giuseppe-verdi-the-chorus-of-the-hebrew-slaves-lyrics
The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves Lyrics
“Va, Pensiero” from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Nabucco, is a beloved piece in this opera. It is so loved that it is often performed twice – the second being in the encore performance. The chorus takes place in… Read More
Go, thoughts, on golden wings;
Go, settle upon the slopes and hills
Where warm and soft and fragrant are
The breezes of our sweet native land!
Greet the banks of the Jordan
The towers of Zion …
Oh my country so beautiful and lost!
Or so dear yet unhappy!
Or harp of the prophetic seers
Why do you hang silent from the willows?
Rekindle the memories within our hearts
Tell us about the time that have gone by
Or similar to the fate of Solomon
Give a sound of lament;
Or let the Lord inspire a concert
That may give to endure our suffering
One of the big causes for men is the ease they are booted out of the family and go from being a dad to being prevented from all contact with the kids .All a woman has to do is call the cops who will chuck the man out on to the street with no where to go .Then the toxic family court does its best to exclude men from being father to their kids .Yes some men are shit heads but there are as many shit vindictive women .One thing I have noticed is the woman moaning because the man works 12 hour days 6 days a week to try and support his family and save to buy a house .This leads to a breakdown of the family unit because the mum and the kids chose to think he is avoiding them .If he cuts his hours he is seen to be a poor provider by the mum because there is no longer spare money for takeaways and taking the kids to the latest fun park .
We lost our 13 year old daughter to suicide last September. She was a class counsellor, honours roll, never taken drugs but lost in a dark web of depression (unbeknownst to us – her parents). We are both spiritual and have had open and honest communication about suicde and depression. She reached out. It failed – multiple times. We have no idea why or how she was sucked down, but all her friends knew and only one actually said something to an adult (who did not act). The phone numbers don’t work. We need to empower our youth to have the courage to stand up. I agree – we have a serious problem here in Aotearoa.