13 ms·

Japan and South Korea see surge of suicides among young women

38 points by ajay-d 6y ago

suby 6y ago
According to the article, for Japan, the number of suicides for men in October is 1,302, up 229 from last year. The number of suicides for women in October is 851, up 385 from last year. Seems strange to single out one gender here. I'm not even sure that you can conclude that this is impacting women harder than it is men, as the article does, given that the number is so much higher for men in the first place.
- bioinformatics 6y ago
  I think we need to demand some equality, with either increasing the number of suicidal women or lowering the men. After all, equal outcomes is the only just outcome.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Well, they do point out an interesting trend. For example, "Femicide" is a hot topic right now in Mexico. "10 women are murdered every day", you'll frequently see mentioned in infographics shared on Mexican Facebook over the past year. There are marches and protests against femicide. Not to say that public attention should never focus on the ordeals of any specific group that doesn't hold the #1 prize in victimhood. But the thing is that you will read all these headlines and start to wonder what Mexico has against its women, and that life here must be especially tough for women when it comes to staying alive. When Mexico comes up in conversation, you might start mentioning things like "oof, really hard to be woman there right now!" Eventually, you might not realize that men are the victims of 90% of all homicides in Mexico.
    - at_a_remove 6y ago
      I recall someone blurting out in horror on a forum that, gosh, a fourth of homeless people are women. How horrible. (I would later see this as an "aghast!" infographic in a newspaper) It's a bit like the UN's tweet in "support" of International Men's Day. Read it. It's bitterly amusing.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        The UN tweet for anyone interested: https://twitter.com/UN/status/1329441047940898817 https://twitter.com/UN/status/1329441047940898817
    - tremon 6y ago
      Eventually, you might not realize that men are the victims of 90% of all homicides in Mexico. Given the new definition of femicide, shouldn't the figure be that 100% of homicide victims are men?
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    What you are asking for is not equality - equal chances for men and women to become suicidal - but equity, equal numbers of suicidal men and women.
  - crowbahr 6y ago
    Please keep snarky agendas off of hacker news. Your comment adds nothing and misconstrues arguments for equal outcomes.
    - klipt 6y ago
      I read it more as a comment that we pay a lot of attention to areas where women are doing worse but not much to areas where men are doing worse. This probably reflects a general societal bias where "missing woman" is seen as inherently more tragic than "missing man".
    - disown 6y ago
      > Please keep snarky agendas off of hacker news. So only agendas you support are allowed here? Who made you dictator? > Your comment adds nothing and misconstrues arguments for equal outcomes. The same goes for your comment. Instead of attacking someone why not add something constructive?
- ajay-d 6y ago
  The male increase looks more in line with the prior year fluctuations. The female increase is way more pronounced. Though I think universally, male suicide count is always higher, regardless of country.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    It varies and I am still reading data, but globally that seems to be the case. https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-data?lang=en https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-data?lang=en There are a few exceptions. Zimbabwe, Somalia, Kenya, Liberia, etc.
- masklinn 6y ago
  > Seems strange to single out one gender here. Is it really? Male suicide increased 20% yoy, which is significant but… female suicide increased 80%. That is much more worrying if it's a trend.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    It's a bit unclear why it's particularly worrying that women might eventually have a suicide rate of X if a trend continues while men actually do have a suicide rate of X and have had that for decades.
    - devenblake 6y ago
      Because for every X suicides there are Y attempts, and that Y is statistically greater for women than it is for men (men generally tend to choose more lethal methods of suicide).
      - scarmig 6y ago
        Why should we weight the life of a person who attempts to kill themselves three times as three times as valuable as the life of someone who succeeds on the first attempt? Even within a given category of method of suicide, men have a greater success rate. Places where the most efficacious method of killing yourself (guns) are banned still maintain a ~3:1 male:female suicide death ratio. A naive read on suicide attempt:success rates suggest that men are literally 10x as effective of women in achieving their aims. That's the kind of ratio that suggests that there's something big not being captured in the statistics, and in that case it's important to focus on the more objective measure (a death by suicide) than something relatively subjective (a suicide attempt)
        devenblake 6y ago
        Hmmm... then I don't know. Should have clarified that it was more of a guess than a solid answer.
      - giovannibonetti 6y ago
- Kluny 6y ago
  We've been hearing about male suicide rates for years. The female suicide rate is the story because it's different.
- DanBC 6y ago
  To explain this: in many places women attempt suicide at high rates. If women start using a more lethal method the rate of death will increase to be similar to men. There are some factors that we think are protective that we use to help explain the difference in rates of death between men and women (more likely to be part of a family, more likely to ask for help, more likely to have contact with health care, less likely to use a more dangerous method, etc etc) and if these factors are changing for women we need to understand what's going on because understanding will also help us protect men. All suicide prevention focuses on middle aged men because that's the highest risk group, but they don't ignore other groups.
OliverJones 6y ago
In the United States the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255 or over chat at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ In Japan, the Health Ministry website has contacts for people to find support by phone or online. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/mamorouyokokoro/ https://www.mhlw.go.jp/mamorouyokokoro/ In South Korea, the Korea Suicide Prevention Center operates a 24-hour hotline at 1393. http://www.suicideprevention.or.kr/main/index.html http://www.suicideprevention.or.kr/main/index.html
- anm89 6y ago
  Remember, if you are in the US at least, and someone tells you they aren't ok, and you recommend a crisis line, and they mention anything regarding suicide, they are very likely going to be extracted from their living situation by physical force and end up incarcerated against their will, at very high expense to themselves, potentially in a way that could lose them their current housing or employment. If their life was going poorly before that, it sure won't be better after. The record of this could follow you around for life as well. I understand this is considered conventional wisdom to recommend these help lines but I really think you should rethink that.
  - asdf3331 6y ago
    In addition to all those negatives, they don't do much help either. As if a phone call to a stranger will make any difference to someone who's contemplating suicide.
  - OliverJones 6y ago
    Suicide prevention workers I know are WELL AWARE that US emergency services (police, ambulance) only have one tool available to them -- grabbing and restraining the subject. And they're very much aware of the disadvantages of that. So they avoid calling the cops whenever they can. To say callers to hotlines are "very likely" to be grabbed is incorrect. Seriously.
pmoriarty 6y ago
"Japan and South Korea are among the few countries to issue current data on suicides" Why don't more countries do this?
- nix23 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... Maybe the writer used Bing to proof his argument.
  - in_cahoots 6y ago
    The wiki article uses historical data, not 2020 numbers.
    - nix23 6y ago
      >Suicide rates by country in 2016 (per 100 000 people, age-adjusted) >List by other sources and years (1985–2018) BTW 2020 is not over, so it should be clear that those numbers are not out ATM
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  To be clear, other countries do report suicide data, just not on a month-to-month basis. There's any number of statistics that a government could spend their time compiling each month, and it's not obvious that suicide numbers should necessarily be a top priority.
- DanBC 6y ago
  There are complications of counting and registering death that make real time data hard to provide. When talking about suicide we have roughly 3 different definitions. 1) That used by coroners or medical examiners. This is normally a tight definition that will exclude some deaths. It's often along the lines of "the deceased ended their life and intended to do so". Sometimes that has to be proved to a high standard. (EG, in England until very recently it had to be shown "beyond all reasonable doubt"). 2) That used by national statistics organisations. These will use causes of death mentioned on death certificates and then try to code the cause of death using ICD10, and then combine these with coroners inquests. These tend to be robust and accurate, although you need to understand what coding they use and when the deaths happened. Both of these tend to have lags in. The first needs to wait for coroners to hold an inquest. The second needs to wait for all the data to be sent in and coded and compiled. The 3rd definition is much broader. It takes real time data from police, hospital, and coroners (but before an inquest has happened). It's sometimes called "real time monitoring" data. Because it uses data from coroners before inquests have happened it sometimes avoids the word suicide and uses phrases like "suspected self-inflicted deaths" instead. We use this data to in suicide prevention when looking at frequently used locations or emerging clusters.
bamboozled 6y ago
“Japan never imposed the sweeping lockdowns seen in many other parts of the world, largely relying on mask-wearing, hand-washing and avoidance of indoor crowding to keep the virus relatively under control.“ It’s really hard to describe how hard the Japanese Government has bungled the coronavirus response. It’s actually quite perplexing. They really know how to keep the population guessing, it’s hard to get tested, the numbers all are dodgy and conveniently changing. There’s a three day lag in the data. It’s seriously mind blowing my bad. Peope don’t feel comfortable because no one knows what’s really going on in Tokyo and to add to all the confusion, there’s a domestic travel campaign ongoing nation wide which encourages travel...insane.
- inquirerofsorts 6y ago
  > the numbers all are dodgy > There’s a three day lag in the data Do you truly need deaths as they happen by the minute?
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    The three day lag can be a buffer to have some time to think and decide what to actually report to the public.
    - tremon 6y ago
      Sure, and it can also be because the death certificates and medical records need to be compiled and aggregated, and many parts of that process can be subject to manual inspection. Many people have cautioned against using mortality figures in the US as a measure of Covid spread, because these figures have a lag measured in weeks before they're considered accurate. Imagine the doctoring being done on those numbers!
- rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
  Not to justify the low bar most of the West has tossed into the ocean, but Japan’s case rate has been orders of magnitude better than in the US or Europe. I would hardly call that bungled.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
Perhaps a dating app, that helps the suicidal find love would help. If you feel rejected by your society, a bridge to another society might help.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Japan could really use that with its birth rates.
  - FruityCoconut 6y ago
    That suggestion has a "yikes" vibe about it. Africa, for example, has a very high birthrate which has and continues to be invaluable in supplementing and diversifying populations in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc with similarly low birthrates. It would be a disaster for multiculturalism and population growth if Europeans started having families again. Is there any reason why Japan would not similarly benefit from such migration patterns?
  - FruityCoconut 6y ago
    There are foreign populations with very high birthrates which have and continue to be invaluable in supplementing and diversifying populations in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc with similarly low birthrates. It would be a disaster for multiculturalism and population growth if Europeans, for example, started having families again so nobody is advocating that. Is there any reason why Japan would not similarly benefit from such migration patterns?
- Espressosaurus 6y ago
  Because you're definitely at your best when you're suicidal, and are not at all likely to be a toxic partner. Sometimes the answer isn't another stupid app.
  - avgDev 6y ago
    The "I'm suicidal dating app", that definitely would have a negative impact on both individuals. People need to understand that you can't fix being suicidal by love or buying things.
Freestyler_3 6y ago
Social media, the perfect lives of women and men where your life SEEMS miserable in comparison to theirs.
tropdrop 6y ago
> “Many of those who reach us say they have no place to go when they’re told to stay home,” said Jun Tachibana of the Bond Project. “Many are having problems with their family, friends or boyfriends. I worry they may be feeling more lonely.” Unfortunately, this article's diagnosing of the problem as loneliness misses the mark entirely. I don't think loneliness alone should account for this 80% increase in female suicides – there is an insidious assumption here, that women are somehow less able to "deal" with being alone, to such a severe extent that they are driven to suicide. Additionally, in the same sentence, Jun Tachibana mentioned that the women are "having problems with their family, friends, or boyfriends" – not that they don't have these interactions, but that these interactions are the source of problems. What the article was woefully remiss in addressing at all is the increased rates of domestic abuse and child abuse that has happened in Japan in the last few years [1]. Domestic abuse in Japan has increased year to year for 16 consecutive years. (I am not sure why, but I do know it's a taboo topic in Japan. See Kore-ada's film Shoplifters about the government response to this situation, and its myopic insistence that the nuclear family solves all). Additionally (in the US, for instance), we have seen domestic abuse rates soar during the pandemic [2]. As per the source: "Disturbingly, the data suggested that the pandemic has produced many new offenders: reports coming from city blocks with no previous record of domestic violence were the main drivers of the increase." These two factors together with Japan's complicated history with suicide and shame actually provide a much clearer (and sad) picture of the possible cause of an increase in suicide for women. [1] – https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/e788d95b8fc7-domestic-violence-cases-in-japan-reach-new-all-time-high-in-2019.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/e788d95b8fc7-dome... [2] – https://phys.org/news/2020-08-domestic-violence-pandemic.html https://phys.org/news/2020-08-domestic-violence-pandemic.htm...
- FruityCoconut 6y ago
  Is that really an insidious assumption to you, or are you trying too hard to be gender-blind? I've been around for a while now, and it's an indisputable fact in my mind that men cope far better with loneliness than women. From seeing friends and strangers in my personal life, to less tangible understandings of evolutionary pressures and general rates of extroversion/introversion between women and men, it's frankly odd to me that such an uncontroversial statement could give anyone pause.

38 points by ajay-d 6y ago

suby 6y ago

According to the article, for Japan, the number of suicides for men in October is 1,302, up 229 from last year. The number of suicides for women in October is 851, up 385 from last year. Seems strange to single out one gender here. I'm not even sure that you can conclude that this is impacting women harder than it is men, as the article does, given that the number is so much higher for men in the first place.

bioinformatics 6y ago
I think we need to demand some equality, with either increasing the number of suicidal women or lowering the men. After all, equal outcomes is the only just outcome.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Well, they do point out an interesting trend. For example, "Femicide" is a hot topic right now in Mexico. "10 women are murdered every day", you'll frequently see mentioned in infographics shared on Mexican Facebook over the past year. There are marches and protests against femicide. Not to say that public attention should never focus on the ordeals of any specific group that doesn't hold the #1 prize in victimhood. But the thing is that you will read all these headlines and start to wonder what Mexico has against its women, and that life here must be especially tough for women when it comes to staying alive. When Mexico comes up in conversation, you might start mentioning things like "oof, really hard to be woman there right now!" Eventually, you might not realize that men are the victims of 90% of all homicides in Mexico.
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    I recall someone blurting out in horror on a forum that, gosh, a fourth of homeless people are women. How horrible. (I would later see this as an "aghast!" infographic in a newspaper) It's a bit like the UN's tweet in "support" of International Men's Day. Read it. It's bitterly amusing.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      The UN tweet for anyone interested: https://twitter.com/UN/status/1329441047940898817 https://twitter.com/UN/status/1329441047940898817
  - tremon 6y ago
    Eventually, you might not realize that men are the victims of 90% of all homicides in Mexico. Given the new definition of femicide, shouldn't the figure be that 100% of homicide victims are men?
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  What you are asking for is not equality - equal chances for men and women to become suicidal - but equity, equal numbers of suicidal men and women.
- crowbahr 6y ago
  Please keep snarky agendas off of hacker news. Your comment adds nothing and misconstrues arguments for equal outcomes.
  - klipt 6y ago
    I read it more as a comment that we pay a lot of attention to areas where women are doing worse but not much to areas where men are doing worse. This probably reflects a general societal bias where "missing woman" is seen as inherently more tragic than "missing man".
  - disown 6y ago
    > Please keep snarky agendas off of hacker news. So only agendas you support are allowed here? Who made you dictator? > Your comment adds nothing and misconstrues arguments for equal outcomes. The same goes for your comment. Instead of attacking someone why not add something constructive?
ajay-d 6y ago
The male increase looks more in line with the prior year fluctuations. The female increase is way more pronounced. Though I think universally, male suicide count is always higher, regardless of country.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  It varies and I am still reading data, but globally that seems to be the case. https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-data?lang=en https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.sdg.3-4-data?lang=en There are a few exceptions. Zimbabwe, Somalia, Kenya, Liberia, etc.
masklinn 6y ago
> Seems strange to single out one gender here. Is it really? Male suicide increased 20% yoy, which is significant but… female suicide increased 80%. That is much more worrying if it's a trend.
- scarmig 6y ago
  It's a bit unclear why it's particularly worrying that women might eventually have a suicide rate of X if a trend continues while men actually do have a suicide rate of X and have had that for decades.
  - devenblake 6y ago
    Because for every X suicides there are Y attempts, and that Y is statistically greater for women than it is for men (men generally tend to choose more lethal methods of suicide).
    - scarmig 6y ago
      Why should we weight the life of a person who attempts to kill themselves three times as three times as valuable as the life of someone who succeeds on the first attempt? Even within a given category of method of suicide, men have a greater success rate. Places where the most efficacious method of killing yourself (guns) are banned still maintain a ~3:1 male:female suicide death ratio. A naive read on suicide attempt:success rates suggest that men are literally 10x as effective of women in achieving their aims. That's the kind of ratio that suggests that there's something big not being captured in the statistics, and in that case it's important to focus on the more objective measure (a death by suicide) than something relatively subjective (a suicide attempt)
      - devenblake 6y ago
        Hmmm... then I don't know. Should have clarified that it was more of a guess than a solid answer.
    - giovannibonetti 6y ago
Kluny 6y ago
We've been hearing about male suicide rates for years. The female suicide rate is the story because it's different.
DanBC 6y ago
To explain this: in many places women attempt suicide at high rates. If women start using a more lethal method the rate of death will increase to be similar to men. There are some factors that we think are protective that we use to help explain the difference in rates of death between men and women (more likely to be part of a family, more likely to ask for help, more likely to have contact with health care, less likely to use a more dangerous method, etc etc) and if these factors are changing for women we need to understand what's going on because understanding will also help us protect men. All suicide prevention focuses on middle aged men because that's the highest risk group, but they don't ignore other groups.

OliverJones 6y ago

In the United States the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255 or over chat at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ In Japan, the Health Ministry website has contacts for people to find support by phone or online. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/mamorouyokokoro/ https://www.mhlw.go.jp/mamorouyokokoro/ In South Korea, the Korea Suicide Prevention Center operates a 24-hour hotline at 1393. http://www.suicideprevention.or.kr/main/index.html http://www.suicideprevention.or.kr/main/index.html

anm89 6y ago
Remember, if you are in the US at least, and someone tells you they aren't ok, and you recommend a crisis line, and they mention anything regarding suicide, they are very likely going to be extracted from their living situation by physical force and end up incarcerated against their will, at very high expense to themselves, potentially in a way that could lose them their current housing or employment. If their life was going poorly before that, it sure won't be better after. The record of this could follow you around for life as well. I understand this is considered conventional wisdom to recommend these help lines but I really think you should rethink that.
- asdf3331 6y ago
  In addition to all those negatives, they don't do much help either. As if a phone call to a stranger will make any difference to someone who's contemplating suicide.
- OliverJones 6y ago
  Suicide prevention workers I know are WELL AWARE that US emergency services (police, ambulance) only have one tool available to them -- grabbing and restraining the subject. And they're very much aware of the disadvantages of that. So they avoid calling the cops whenever they can. To say callers to hotlines are "very likely" to be grabbed is incorrect. Seriously.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"Japan and South Korea are among the few countries to issue current data on suicides" Why don't more countries do this?

nix23 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... Maybe the writer used Bing to proof his argument.
- in_cahoots 6y ago
  The wiki article uses historical data, not 2020 numbers.
  - nix23 6y ago
    >Suicide rates by country in 2016 (per 100 000 people, age-adjusted) >List by other sources and years (1985–2018) BTW 2020 is not over, so it should be clear that those numbers are not out ATM
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
To be clear, other countries do report suicide data, just not on a month-to-month basis. There's any number of statistics that a government could spend their time compiling each month, and it's not obvious that suicide numbers should necessarily be a top priority.
DanBC 6y ago
There are complications of counting and registering death that make real time data hard to provide. When talking about suicide we have roughly 3 different definitions. 1) That used by coroners or medical examiners. This is normally a tight definition that will exclude some deaths. It's often along the lines of "the deceased ended their life and intended to do so". Sometimes that has to be proved to a high standard. (EG, in England until very recently it had to be shown "beyond all reasonable doubt"). 2) That used by national statistics organisations. These will use causes of death mentioned on death certificates and then try to code the cause of death using ICD10, and then combine these with coroners inquests. These tend to be robust and accurate, although you need to understand what coding they use and when the deaths happened. Both of these tend to have lags in. The first needs to wait for coroners to hold an inquest. The second needs to wait for all the data to be sent in and coded and compiled. The 3rd definition is much broader. It takes real time data from police, hospital, and coroners (but before an inquest has happened). It's sometimes called "real time monitoring" data. Because it uses data from coroners before inquests have happened it sometimes avoids the word suicide and uses phrases like "suspected self-inflicted deaths" instead. We use this data to in suicide prevention when looking at frequently used locations or emerging clusters.

bamboozled 6y ago

“Japan never imposed the sweeping lockdowns seen in many other parts of the world, largely relying on mask-wearing, hand-washing and avoidance of indoor crowding to keep the virus relatively under control.“ It’s really hard to describe how hard the Japanese Government has bungled the coronavirus response. It’s actually quite perplexing. They really know how to keep the population guessing, it’s hard to get tested, the numbers all are dodgy and conveniently changing. There’s a three day lag in the data. It’s seriously mind blowing my bad. Peope don’t feel comfortable because no one knows what’s really going on in Tokyo and to add to all the confusion, there’s a domestic travel campaign ongoing nation wide which encourages travel...insane.

inquirerofsorts 6y ago
> the numbers all are dodgy > There’s a three day lag in the data Do you truly need deaths as they happen by the minute?
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  The three day lag can be a buffer to have some time to think and decide what to actually report to the public.
  - tremon 6y ago
    Sure, and it can also be because the death certificates and medical records need to be compiled and aggregated, and many parts of that process can be subject to manual inspection. Many people have cautioned against using mortality figures in the US as a measure of Covid spread, because these figures have a lag measured in weeks before they're considered accurate. Imagine the doctoring being done on those numbers!
rm_-rf_slash 6y ago
Not to justify the low bar most of the West has tossed into the ocean, but Japan’s case rate has been orders of magnitude better than in the US or Europe. I would hardly call that bungled.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

Perhaps a dating app, that helps the suicidal find love would help. If you feel rejected by your society, a bridge to another society might help.

MattGaiser 6y ago
Japan could really use that with its birth rates.
- FruityCoconut 6y ago
  That suggestion has a "yikes" vibe about it. Africa, for example, has a very high birthrate which has and continues to be invaluable in supplementing and diversifying populations in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc with similarly low birthrates. It would be a disaster for multiculturalism and population growth if Europeans started having families again. Is there any reason why Japan would not similarly benefit from such migration patterns?
- FruityCoconut 6y ago
  There are foreign populations with very high birthrates which have and continue to be invaluable in supplementing and diversifying populations in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc with similarly low birthrates. It would be a disaster for multiculturalism and population growth if Europeans, for example, started having families again so nobody is advocating that. Is there any reason why Japan would not similarly benefit from such migration patterns?
Espressosaurus 6y ago
Because you're definitely at your best when you're suicidal, and are not at all likely to be a toxic partner. Sometimes the answer isn't another stupid app.
- avgDev 6y ago
  The "I'm suicidal dating app", that definitely would have a negative impact on both individuals. People need to understand that you can't fix being suicidal by love or buying things.

Freestyler_3 6y ago

Social media, the perfect lives of women and men where your life SEEMS miserable in comparison to theirs.

tropdrop 6y ago

> “Many of those who reach us say they have no place to go when they’re told to stay home,” said Jun Tachibana of the Bond Project. “Many are having problems with their family, friends or boyfriends. I worry they may be feeling more lonely.” Unfortunately, this article's diagnosing of the problem as loneliness misses the mark entirely. I don't think loneliness alone should account for this 80% increase in female suicides – there is an insidious assumption here, that women are somehow less able to "deal" with being alone, to such a severe extent that they are driven to suicide. Additionally, in the same sentence, Jun Tachibana mentioned that the women are "having problems with their family, friends, or boyfriends" – not that they don't have these interactions, but that these interactions are the source of problems. What the article was woefully remiss in addressing at all is the increased rates of domestic abuse and child abuse that has happened in Japan in the last few years [1]. Domestic abuse in Japan has increased year to year for 16 consecutive years. (I am not sure why, but I do know it's a taboo topic in Japan. See Kore-ada's film Shoplifters about the government response to this situation, and its myopic insistence that the nuclear family solves all). Additionally (in the US, for instance), we have seen domestic abuse rates soar during the pandemic [2]. As per the source: "Disturbingly, the data suggested that the pandemic has produced many new offenders: reports coming from city blocks with no previous record of domestic violence were the main drivers of the increase." These two factors together with Japan's complicated history with suicide and shame actually provide a much clearer (and sad) picture of the possible cause of an increase in suicide for women. [1] – https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/e788d95b8fc7-domestic-violence-cases-in-japan-reach-new-all-time-high-in-2019.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/e788d95b8fc7-dome... [2] – https://phys.org/news/2020-08-domestic-violence-pandemic.html https://phys.org/news/2020-08-domestic-violence-pandemic.htm...

FruityCoconut 6y ago
Is that really an insidious assumption to you, or are you trying too hard to be gender-blind? I've been around for a while now, and it's an indisputable fact in my mind that men cope far better with loneliness than women. From seeing friends and strangers in my personal life, to less tangible understandings of evolutionary pressures and general rates of extroversion/introversion between women and men, it's frankly odd to me that such an uncontroversial statement could give anyone pause.