What causes suicide epidemicsand how can we prevent them?
Many suicides are caused by biological mental illness, but sometimes the suicide rate of a particular group jumpstwo-, three-, or even ten-foldin a short time, behaving like an epidemic. Suicide epidemics unfold more slowly than microbial plagues like flu or malaria, but they happen far too quickly to result from genetic changes and affect far too many people to be explained away as spontaneous cases of brain injury.
These epidemics have occurred in Americas rustbelt towns, Russias cities, and indigenous communities from the Arctic to the Pacific Islands. They tend not to be associated with wars, poverty, or environmental disasters but with a rupture in the social environment so profound that people come to question their most intimate attachments. The mental pain that drives suicide has been likened to the flipside of love, but if so, how does love suddenly disappearor seem tofrom the lives of thousands of people at once? In Why Live, public health researcher Helen C. Epstein sets out to find the answer.
