SUICIDE STATISTICS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 29, 19 September 1911, Page 6

SUICIDE STATISTICS.

The suicide habit is sometimes regarded as “a malady of modernity,”, and is used as an argument that racial I degeneracy is upon ns. It is inter- j osting, therefore, to find that Mr G. H. Knibbs, Federal Statist, in a paper read in Sydney, shows that the frequency of suicide is on the decrease in Australia, and that the rate of increase in other countries is diminishing. He finds that only a little over 1 per cent of deaths in Australia arc due to this cause, and that the frequency of‘suicides in that country is hut two-thirds that of Europe. In Europe at tho present time tho number per million committing suicide is 164, and, if the indications of the past halfcentury are maintained, it will be 165 in 1911, but will take to the year 1925 to reach 167. An examination of the statistics furnishes some interjesting conclusions. Perhaps tne most peculiar is that most suicides do not occur in depressing weather, when in consequence the' spark of vitality is at its lowest, but when the weather conditions should apparently promote a friendly feeling to the world at large. In both Europe and Australia tho. maximum rates are coincident with summer', and the minimum rates with winter. One explanation is that in .bright '‘happy” weather the person with suicidal tendencies is oppressed by the contrast between his own state of mind and tho joyous condition of Nature. With suicide, as with other things, mental activity is the root of all evil. Suicide is catching, in tho sense that one suicide may • lead to another. There can bo an epidemic of suicides in certain areas, just hs there are epidemics of measles. The unbalanced mind is prone to suggestion. A recent cable stated that a man, after having seen a pictorial representation of a father murdering his daughter, went, home and killed his own child, and no doubt numerous other cases of imitation could he found.