Suicide Myths

Image via

Does drought cause suicide? Is a man who works the land different from a man in the city?

Yesterday the Abbott government has announced a $320 million assistance package for farmers suffering crippling drought that will include $10.7 million in funds to “help increase access to social and mental health services in communities affected by this drought.”

Why earmark this $10.7 million? Looking only at media coverage of rural mental health you might think it was because a lack of rain causes folk to kill themselves. The Australian reports that in Queensland “at least 16 cattlemen, farmers and farm workers have taken their own lives in the state’s northwest in the past year.” Unofficially, the toll is likely higher. Last year ABC news online ran a similar report, as did Queensland’s Courier Mail. One particularly gruesome tale was of a farmer who was told that his four hundred cattle—which he planned to sell—were too emaciated for auction. So he shot them, then himself.

Do you think the explanation is drought? I don’t.

There is a myth or mirage, propounded by the Australian people, government, and press, of a man in the outback who is different from other men, of masculinity that you can’t find anywhere else and certainly not in a city. This man can withstand a lot but he has a limit. Sometimes the vast arid land is too much for him, and he must take his own life. This is a potent mirage and a butch mirage. But, in case you didn’t know, mirages are caused by hot air.

It’s not that there isn’t a link between drought and suicide; ANU’s Ivan Hanigan published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that tracked suicides and droughts from 1970 to 2007 and found 9 percent of rural suicides in men between the ages of 30-49 can be attributed to the drought index. But this link obscures the fact that, on a psychological level, suicide is often caused by the same factors no matter who you are or where you are—feelings of isolation and despair; a sense that there are no other options; and inadequate access to mental health services. Could the financial stress of a drought be the final straw? Yes. It could also be the necessary excuse for a depressed man who feels he’s not allowed to need help. And anyway, since when is the final straw the whole story?

Suicide is hardly the only problem with men’s health in the country, it’s not even the most troubling. Truth is, men in rural areas are simply more prone to premature death than those in cities. As the 2010 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report A snapshot of men’s health in regional and remote Australia details, rural Australian males are more likely than their urban counterparts to die of circulatory diseases, motor vehicle accidents, diabetes, injury and poisoning, neoplasms (tumours); in fact pretty much everything but falls and infectious diseases.

Still, you might be asking, surely farmers are committing suicide at an unacceptable rate? Undoubtedly. But according to the AIHW Report, there is a group of men in the country with a higher risk of suicide. Members of this group are more at risk than any other group in Australia. They are, not surprisingly, Indigenous men in very remote areas. But because there is no national myth emphasising the ruggedness of these men and their unique, almost otherworldly problems, you are also unlikely to see a news item about it. Or, when you’re reading about a new government funding initiative addressing indigenous mental health, to see the line, “This is a government determined to stand by the people of Australia in good times and bad.”

There are many reasons why rural health is worse than big city health. Firstly, operating a rural health service in Australia is a logistical nightmare. Because population density is so sparse, high quality care can, for many, be hundreds of kilometres away. Secondly, as is the rule elsewhere, the worse off you are socio-economically, the more pessimistic you ought to be about your future health. Contrary to the myth that farmers are doing it the toughest, those gainfully employed in the agricultural sector are actually doing better than many of their rural compatriots.

But one of the more intractable and frustrating problems facing rural health is cultural. From eating habits to substance abuse, the culture of country life is hazardous and often lethal. An attitude of stoicism, of not asking for help, of forgiving alcoholism, of scepticism towards the very notion of psychology is pervasive amongst men in the country (perhaps only men, according to Hanigan’s study. During a drought, women in the outback are less likely to commit suicide). And the very articles that are trying to address those attitudes—by interviewing Queensland Lifeline director Derek Tuffield, say—reinforce them by having a headline that suggests the root cause of the suicides is drought and not mental illness.

The recently announced government package also supports the myth. $10.7 million to “increase access to social and mental health services in communities affected by this drought.” Politicians know that mental health services in regional and remote areas are underfunded but apparently nothing short of a drought can justify doing something about it. It sends a message to the men living there that only drought can legitimise what are almost certainly pre-existing mental illnesses.

Too many people are ignoring the larger picture of healthcare in the outback, and buying into a myth about drought and suicide.