Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Mainly driven by alcoholism, and it is very well known:

> Alcohol and drug use among Inuit increased significantly between 1992 and 2004, particularly among young adults. Alcohol users consumed significantly more alcohol per drinking episode than other Canadians in both time periods. Considerable cannabis use was widespread. In 2004, no significant differences in frequencies of heavy drinking episodes were observed by gender, with 60% of drug users consuming alcohol on a regular basis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4696457/

and the link between alcoholism and suicide is well documented:

> Various classical studies found an excess of suicide among alcoholics [73–80]. Beck and Steer [81] and Beck et al. [82] found that alcoholism was the strongest single predictor of subsequent completed suicide in a sample of attempted suicides.

> In 1997, Harris and Barraclough, in their unusually comprehensive meta-analysis analyzed 32 papers related to alcohol dependence and abuse, comprising a population of over 45,000 individuals [34]. They found that combining the studies gave a suicide risk almost six times that expected but with variation of 1–60 times. Specifically, they found that the suicide risk for females was very much greater than for males, about 20 times that expected compared with four for males. Suicide risk among alcohol-dependent individuals has been estimated to be 7% (comparable with 6% for mood disorders; [83]). Of 40,000 Norwegian conscripts followed prospectively over 40 years, the probability of suicide was 4.76% (relative risk +6.9) among those classified as alcohol abusers compared with 0.63 for non-drinkers [84]. Similar finding have been made worldwide [85]. Murphy et al. studied 50 suicides and found that an alcohol use disorder was the primary diagnosis in 23% and a co-occurring diagnosis in 37% [86]. Conwell et al. performed a study in New York City and reported that alcohol misuse was present in the history of 56% of individuals who completed suicide [43].

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2872355/

EDIT: even in Japan where there is a significant correlation between alcoholism and suicide rates (in Japanese men at least): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5865438_Alcohol_con...

Given the violence, dispossession, and virulent racism indigenous people are and we’re forced to bear, isn’t the alcoholism another symptom, not the cause?

That is certainly up for discussion and debate. But once you get into alcoholism, having a greater suicide rate than average is a given.

Dr. Gabor Maté talks a lot about trauma and how it can get "preserved" over generations (he is himself a survivor of the Holocaust).

Don't know why you got downvoted. Dr. Maté's work is really interesting.

Similar groups in various other arctic locations throughout the globe have abuse and suicide rates that are only marginally lower. Further the greatest number of victims are youth.

Living like it's the 1700s only works if you aren't aware that the rest of the world exists. Put youth in very remote locations and teach them that maintaining a lost culture is their most important reason for existing -- but they're aware of a wide world that will embrace them [^1] yet they're told that it reviles them -- and it has to be pretty self-defeating. Add horrendous weather most of the year, harsh conditions, and it just isn't conducive to happiness.

^1 - Aboriginal racism comes up a lot, and rightly so. But it's often a stereotype of reserves and remote communities (one very sadly backed by data -- if you live near a reserve, property crime is likely significantly higher than if you didn't), and not about a peoples. Canada is a very multicultural society and any of these people would be just another shade in Canada, but because of the clutching to the "old ways", much as if I was wearing a Kilt and trying to raise sheep, it's tough to do and these youth bear the burden of their ancestors more than most of us do.

> Living like it's the 1700s only works if you aren't aware that the rest of the world exists. Put youth in very remote locations and teach them that maintaining a lost culture is their most important reason for existing -- but they're aware of a wide world that will embrace them [^1] yet they're told that it reviles them -- and it has to be pretty self-defeating. Add horrendous weather most of the year, harsh conditions, and it just isn't conducive to happiness.

You’re describing the outcome of a centuries long, at many points explicitly genocidal, settler-colonialist project and then hand-washing it away as “clinging to the old ways.” These circumstances are literally what was designed for indigenous people in Canada by those who have profited from the dispossession, not those of their choosing. I don’t think indigenous people are backward or inherently inferior. I think Canada lies about its own history and crimes against these people, and then projects its own blame upon them.

"I don’t think indigenous people are backward or inherently inferior."

Weird that you drop this bizarre and incredibly offensive statement.

Countless indigenous people are simply Canadians. They live in cities, have jobs, and are enjoying lives as normal Canadians. Many Canadians have often significant aboriginal ancestry in their blood. People just living as a mixed bag of peoples in one of the richer countries on the Earth, enjoying life.

What I'm talking about are very remote settlements and reservations. This is situational, not about genetics. The situation of reservations and those far flung settlements just isn't conducive to happiness. No amount of government spending will change that.

>No amount of government spending will change that.

Why not buy them bus tickets to Ontario? There's some value in preserving cultures as a matter of record, but that's not worth unnecessary suffering to make it happen.

> Why not buy them bus tickets to Ontario?

There are no roads to any of the 25 towns in Nunavut.

You do not deserve to be downvoted. People live in remote villages for a variety of reasons. Nobody "puts" them there any more than I "put" my son in the town I live in.

GP may have had a better intention with their comment, but the way it was worded is extremely ignorant of what it's actually like to be born into a remote community that has existed for thousands of years.

Yes, in some circumstances, they were put there -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Arctic_relocation

Reserves did not exist for 1000s of years. The indigenous were nomads, and now are more grounded in territory.

From the comment you seek to demote:

>The outside people who express the most interest in your welfare seem bent on curating you like an artifact.

I think you might have let your bias alter your reception of their comment.

Put youth in very remote locations and teach them that maintaining a lost culture is their most important reason for existing

It must be hard to have that put on you. The outside people who express the most interest in your welfare seem bent on curating you like an artifact. Meanwhile, there's very little economy if you want to stay, and if you go, you'll be going into a partly alien culture where you know you will encounter bias.

Speaking about America rather than Canada, I think to most Americans the idea of ethnic bias against Native Americans seems like "just" a matter of the quaint and damaging stereotypes we carry, but near reservations it takes a similar form to racism against African-Americans: fear and resentment of the socioeconomic issues in the community, fear and resentment of the historical culpability of white people, an implicit assumption that something must be inferior about them because white people operating under the same historical burden would have had it all straightened out by now. If I were a young person on a reservation judging white people by the ones I encountered nearby, I think it would make leaving into a predominately white world a scary prospect.

Does alcoholism drive suicides, do suicides drive alcoholism, or do other things drive both suicide and alcoholism (or, perhaps more likely, all of the above)?

You could argue that people who end up trapped with alcoholism were probably having problems in the first place and used alcohol as a form of escapism. It's a generalization, but there are probably hidden factors behind alcoholism and suicide.

Alcohol loosens your inhibitions and pushes you deeper into the abyss. While you wouldnt have killed yourself sober, the answer might look different after a few bottles. Its the same reason firearms have an influence on the suicide rate. Pulling a trigger is just a lot less of a hurdle then most other methods.

This makes me wonder what the actual rate of suicides are performed under influence compared to completely sober. I have a feeling the latter is extremely rare.

I dont think that is the case either. Alcohol has an influence but like with handguns, there are plenty who manage without both.

The percentage of suicides performed under the influence seems to be about 30%[0], so a minority of suicides, but still a sizeable number.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/health/19suicide.html

Yes it seems much more likely that people are using alcohol as a form of self medication.

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