I find articles like this highly annoying. I see the headline, think "if it's not the darkness, I wonder what is" and click the link expecting to find the answer. Instead of the answer, however, I get a fluffy human-interest piece that I simply do not care about.
How about we stop with crap like this, I don't need to hear a story, just the facts please. I've wasted several minutes on this story and still have no clue what the real reason is.
> Like native people all around the Arctic — and all over the world — Greenlanders were seeing the deadly effects of rapid modernization and unprecedented cultural interference. [...] Between 1970 and 1980, the suicide rate there quadrupled to about seven times the U.S. rate (it's still about six times higher).
> Her observations are in line with something psychologists and sociologists think is fundamental to the causes of suicide in Greenland. When communities are disrupted, like Kangeq was, families start to collapse. There's an increase in alcoholism, child neglect and physical abuse, all of which are risk factors for suicide. Later, people who didn't get the love and support they needed as children find it difficult to cope with the routine heartbreak of dating, and a breakup becomes the final insult in a lifetime of hurt.
If there was one thing that my conservative culture had taught me better, It would be this. Even knowing this doesn't make the process any easier although there is some comfort in knowing that many others face this situation as well.
I suggest you just preface all your searches with wikipedia, then you won't have to hear a story.
That way, nothing needs to be stopped, and people like me who enjoy some context and humanity with their facts can continue to find excellent stories like this.
The title should communicate what the reader is to expect when opening the piece.
Fact is, it isn't completely clear why the rate is so high. Rapid modernization, decades of Danish control, a disappearing culture/way of life and lack of mental health facilities can all be named as factors.
Sorry were annoyed and feel like you've wasted your time on a well written, well researched human interest piece. And yes, sometimes you need to know just the bare facts. But do you really have to know the reasons behind the high suicide rate in Greenland? Or were you triggered by the headline? In that case a human interest story conveys the message a lot better than just the numbers. To me, Hacker News is about triggering curiosity about things that were previously unknown by me. Stories like these remind me that there is a world beyond choosing if I want soy milk or regular milk in my mochachino.
But hey, let me save you a couple of minutes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Greenland#Reasons
This is mildly in conflict with the finding that there's more suicide in Greenland in summer than in winter, but worth considering.
Doctors have a very high suicide rate, and some of that is due to their knowledge and ability to kill themselves properly.
I've seen some theories that people in general don't commit suicide while under active hardship, but after the hardship lets up a bit and they have time to reflect on it.
Also relative hardship is far more important than absolute hardship. During the winter everybody is a bit miserable and under the weather so you don't stick out so much. When the summer comes and everybody but you cheer up the contrast becomes a lot more noticeable.
When suicide is driven by an established tradition of leaving so that your family doesn't starve, you really expect it to occur in winter. By the time the hardship is gone, so is the justification for suicide.
And yeah, this isn't a problem limited to Greenland. There has been a lot of news lately about the suicide strings at Attawapiskat. And Alaskan natives are twice more likely to commit suicide than non-natives.
It is highly suggestive that it will though.
> Fact is, it isn't completely clear why the rate is so high.
Then why bother writing an article about it at all ?
> And yes, sometimes you need to know just the bare facts.
No, I always want just the bare facts. Anything else simply isn't relevant. You may call it "well researched human interest" I call it filler material. It feels like a high-school kid trying to make the minimum word count for an essay.
A story is a series of facts, but can provide a richer understanding sometimes, as one can build a cohesive picture in their mind.
Putting forward a hypothesis requires facts and a ton of "fluff." It seems to me that you're not actually interested in learning anything, you just want some factoids. Try the CIA Factbook.
Begin with a short abstract in which you present your conclusions. Then follow up with how you arrived at that conclusion for people who want to go in-depth. Basically the way scientific papers are organised.
"The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended..."
Not every story should be structured as a scientific document.
The point of news it not to entertain but to inform.
Nonfiction need not read like crop reports or scientific papers. The best analogy is to photography. Photography is by its nature nonfiction, and yet we recognize that all photographs are not equal. Some are beautiful, some are moving, some are dry and clinical. They all inform, but some do more.
Usually I find this is the difference between a good broadsheet newspaper and a provincial one.
It's fine to write in an expansive, non-tabloid way in the main body but you must address the headline in the first paragraph.
If you don't care for the lives affected by the phenomenon, then why would you be caring for the reason?
That's something even less important to know if one doesn't care about the effects.
I'm interested in the mechanism, not some anecdotes about one or two specific people. I like complicated systems and how they work, this interest me because it could give me additional insight in how the human machine works.
I don't need to be interested traveling to be interested in how a plane stays in the air or how the engine of a car works.
Guyana and Suriname have severe problems with their post-colonial status, very low income contrasted by wealth shown by western mining companies and their employees, a very big problem with alcoholism and very bad perspectives for most (soldiers turning barkeepers because they don't get paid, police extorting people in lieu of a living wage etc). I think the same reasons the author listed for Greenland might apply to those countries too.
South Korea as well, its latitude roughly matches the northern half of Tunisia (Seoul's latitude is 37°33′N, Tunisia's northernmost city of Bizerte is at 37°16′N)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea#Age
"The main cause of South Korea's relatively high suicide rate is due to the elderly's substantially high suicide rate, which is significantly dragging up the otherwise relatively low average rate. This is due to poor elderly people killing themselves not to be a burden on their families,..."
1) Society changes. After breakup with USSR in 1990, all collective farms were dismantled and majority of industry closed or restructured what caused a lot of people lose jobs and forced to change profession. This was hard/impossible for some, especially older people, who were used to work the same job for years or even the whole life. In first years it was partly offset by the excitement of independence, but as years went by, excitement faded away and problems remained. Even bigger impact was the mental change that you are responsible for your and your family well being and there's no longer government that takes care of every aspect of life. Some people still can't wrap their minds about this fact and blame government everything. Also, there are very few jobs in smaller towns/villages, so those who could, already fled to cities or abroad and those who couldn't are doomed to poverty which leads to the second reason.
2) Alcoholism. Lithuanians, as most northlings, are overly serious (if you smiled to strangers, locals around usually look suspiciously or even aggressively) and prone to depression what combined witch financial difficulties many faces (caused by 1) often leads seeking relief in alcohol that worsens depression even further.
3) Identity crisis (not discussed very often, mostly my thoughts). We are still in transitional state, where no longer belong to east, but not yet fully converted to western way of life. We lack self-dependence, motivation, initiative and risk taking attributes common for democratic westerners and keep looking back for somebody to lead and hold hand (the same strong leader cult as in Russia today). We are like a teen who fled his parent's home -- don't know where to go and what to do.
These problems aren't unique and many post soviet countries have similar issues, though some simply cope with them better than others. Anyway I'm optimistic, because progress can be clearly seen in many areas (Lithuania has one of the fastest growing economies in EU) and many young people are doing better than their parents.
That was obvious from the get go. Whoever even claimed this in the first place just did not bother to check facts for more than 5 minutes.
And no, it's not just the dark that makes people commit suicide. Of the top 10 countries with the highest suicide rates, only Lithuania can be considered as having a somewhat gloomy winter. The rest of the countries all get more sunlight (Guyana, Suriname and Sri Lanka for instance) than the countries generally accepted as happiest in the world: Denmark (ironically, considering the story), Switzerland, Iceland and Norway.