Abstract
Japan’s suicide rate rose after the Asian Crisis and the subsequent economic downturn, and has remained high since. In 2009, the male suicide rate was the third highest among OECD countries, and the female suicide rate was the second highest. According to the National Police Agency, more than 30,000 people committed suicide on average in each year from 1998 to 2011; in 2013, 27,283 people killed themselves in Japan. In addition, the National Police Agency (2014) reported that the major reasons for committing suicide in 2013 were health conditions (13,680 cases), financial difficulties (4,636 cases), family problems (3,930 cases) and work issues (2,323 cases) in Japan. The methods used to commit suicide, in 2009, were: hanging (19,700), gas poisoning (4,337), jumping from a great height (2,360), drowning (886), incision (683), other poisons (663), jumping in front of trains (643), and other suicide methods (1,150). Suicide also generates a negative externality; the WHO (2000) indicates that on average each suicide intimately affects at least six other people. Thus, suicide prevention programs should also include postvention to those who are mentally affected.
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Notes
- 1.
There were 2,749 other cases that were not included in any of these categories.
- 2.
Further information is available at http://ikiru.ncnp.go.jp/ikiru-hp/english.html
- 3.
- 4.
The questionnaires included in the surveys were selected and adjusted by the ESRI staffs under the guidance of the Commission on Measuring Well-being, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan.
- 5.
It should be kept in mind that respondents’ answers might be affected by the mode of the survey. To make it clear how differences in survey mode give rise to sampling differences, the ESRI compared the results of the two surveys; this offered some guidance when evaluating the limitations of the online survey.
- 6.
The online survey’s respondents were chosen from the registered individuals on the online survey agency, whose panel respondents include as much as 1,603,000 (March, 2012).
- 7.
The ESRI found that the average subjective well-being reported by younger people in the online survey is lower than those in the direct-visit-and-self-completion survey, suggesting that we may need to consider possible biases when analyzing responses from younger respondents, as well as respondents of old age.
- 8.
The share is calculated as the number of respondents who chose either “I have attempted suicide”, “I have considered suicide seriously”, or “Do not want to answer,” divided by the total number respondents in each prefecture.
- 9.
We did not use data from respondents who answered “Do not want to answer” to the suicidal ideation question (Q34); we leave that analysis for another manuscript.
- 10.
There were no clear gender differences regarding the correlation between happiness and suicidal ideation.
- 11.
Putnam (1993) defined social capital as the features of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Ryoichi Watanabe and Shiho Kawano for supporting this research project at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Cabinet Office, Government of Japan. We are especially grateful to Bruno Frey, the editor of this chapter. We also thank Miles Kimball, Seiichi Kondo, Margit Osterloh, Noah Smith, Tim Tiefenbach, Aki Tsuchiya and participants of the International Workshop held at Doshisha University in Kyoto and the International Conference held at the EHESS in Paris on “Comparative Study on Happiness” for all comments and suggestions received while working on this manuscript. This work was supported by JSPS Topic-Setting Program to Advance Cutting-Edge Humanities and Social Sciences Research.
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Kuwahara, S., Tamura, T., Kamesaka, A., Murai, T. (2016). Accessing Suicidal Ideation from Responses to Queries on Subjective Well-Being. In: Tachibanaki, T. (eds) Advances in Happiness Research. Creative Economy. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55753-1_16
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