Experts expect finance-related suicides to rise in Japan
It should hardly be news that in a country as suicide-prone as Japan that the global economic meltdown is expected to result in a higher-than-normal suicide rate, but I’m still a little stunned by the numbers. Normal levels of suicides in Japan number 30,000 per year – the last financial crisis caused a 34-percent jump in this figure.
Numerous nations across Asia are at risk of increased suicide rates due to the economic climate, according to Shu-sen Chang, a psychiatrist at Bristol University and author of a new report on Asian suicide.
Suicide rates in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong reportedly soared 40 per cent among men and 20 per cent for women following the economic slump triggered by currency devaluations in Asia in 1997, according to the new study.
“Around the time of the recession, we saw an acute rise in the unemployment rate and these changes seemed to be associated with the economic crisis and the rise in the suicide rate,” said Chang. “We concluded that changes in unemployment rates might contribute to some of the rise in the suicide rate.”
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