SUICIDE IS NOT A PRIVATE AFFAIR

David Clark : We face a mental health challlenge.

685 people took their own lives over the past year. New Zealand has always had a stubbornly high suicide rate, but with the numbers on the rise again the alarm bells have begun ringing.  Health Minister David Clark says the figures are a 'sad reminder of the scale of the long-term mental health challenge we face as a nation'. But treating suicide as largely a mental health problem is exactly the wrong approach to take.

THE DISTRESSING news that 685 people took their own lives last year is, of course, a source of much concern. This is the highest level that the suicide rate has reached since records were began twelve years ago. But the reality is that, despite the efforts being made to prevent people killing themselves, New Zealand has always had a disturbingly high suicide rate. In 2017, for example, UNICEF reported that New Zealand had the highest youth suicide rate in the developed world. There were loud expressions of alarm to this news as well.

The Labour-led Government, engaged in a public relations campaign to convince us that its economic policies are all about 'well being' , has reacted quickly to the latest disturbing news. Health Minister David Clark said in a press release that the self-inflicted death of 685 people " is a sad reminder of the scale of the long-term mental health challenge we face as a nation.'

He said that announcements about a Suicide Prevention Office and a new national suicide prevention strategy would be made in the near future. He also reminded us of the measures that the Government had made in the 2019 Budget to fight suicide including a "a record $1.9 billion dollar investment in mental health and addiction – including $455 million to create new frontline services and $40 million for suicide prevention.'

The general clamour is that New Zealand is 'in the grip of a mental health crisis' These were the words of one psychotherapist  reported in the NZ Herald and underlined by Prime Jacinda Ardern who declared that it would take time for the Government's 'mental health reforms' to kick in. But this is the same Jacinda Ardern who, just a few days earlier, supported the distress inflicted on 114 beneficiaries who had seen their benefits savagely cut because they had failed a drug test.

The problem remains that continuing to treat suicide as largely a mental health problem may provide an army of psychiatrists, counsellors and policy makers with lots of work but it downplays, often obscures, the social dimension to suicide. But we can't ignore the fact that people's social and emotional lives cannot be examined as separate from the economic reality they face everyday.

It was only last week that the NBR Rich List announced that New Zealand's rich elite had increased their total wealth by a massive $90 billion over the past year. But at the other end of the economic pole New Zealanders are getting poorer. Oxfam's January report,  Public Good or Private Wealth, revealed the poorest 50 per cent of New Zealand's population saw their total wealth decrease by$1.3b during the previous twelve months.

We live in a country where top five per cent has more wealth than the bottom 90 per cent .

It is entirely reasonable to say that while the rich get richer the poor not only get poorer, they also getting more stressed, more anxious, more depressed, more suicidal.

While everyday the mainstream media celebrates the 'prosperous economy' and the 'wonders' of the market economy generally, life for many is more difficult than ever before. Wages are low. Benefits remain at a subsistence level. Housing is next to unaffordable. Climate catastrophe looms with our politicians seemingly incapable of reacting to the crisis in any substantial and meaningful way. People, deprived of a political voice by parliamentary parties that speak only in the language of the market, feel powerless and alone.

In such circumstances, is it any wonder that suicide rates remain not only stubbornly high but are increasing again? Indeed the Government's own Mental Health Inquiry, which wasn't brave enough to call out the impact of capitalism, did say:

Mark Fisher : Mental illness is caused by the dysfunction of capitalism.

"Clear links exist between social deprivation, trauma, exclusion and increasing levels of mental distress. Our wellbeing is being further undermined by aspects of modern life, such as loss of community, isolation and loneliness."

It also quoted a 2017 report, 'Why has increased provision of psychiatric treatment not reduced the prevalence of mental disorder' which states:

'If our treatments work shouldn’t we have fewer people presenting in crisis, fewer people on a disability benefit due to mental illness, a reduction in community measures of psychological distress and a decrease in the suicide rate? …… despite access to costly biomedical treatment, something central to recovery appears to be missing in the social fabric of developed countries.'

What is missing in the 'social fabric' is something that capitalism cannot provide. Capitalism demands greed and individuality, and poisons community. As Karl Marx wrote capitalism 'produces palaces — but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty — but for the worker, deformity.'

in 2016 the left wing British writer and cultural theorist Mark Fisher committed suicide after a long battle with depression exacerbated by what he described as ' institutional, work-related stress.' He wrote:

“We cower in our offices, experiencing our inability to cope with the impossible workload, as our personal failure and shame, telling each other that there is no time to talk.”

He observed that mental illness is not a private affair but a direct consequence of the social dysfunction of capitalism which not only causes the illness, but then charges you as you try to stay well by paying for a gym or a counsellor.