Financial ills may leave people in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong feeling vulnerable: expert
Written by Writer on Saturday, October 18th, 2008
Job crunch seen upping suicides
Financial ills may leave people in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong feeling vulnerable: expert
Friday, Oct. 17, 2008
Bloomberg
Job losses caused by the global credit crunch may prompt more people to kill themselves in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, according to a researcher who studied suicide rates during Asia’s currency crisis a decade ago.
Suicides among men climbed about 40 percent in all three locations in 1998 compared with a year earlier, and rose about 20 percent among women, said Shu-sen Chang, a psychiatrist with the University of Bristol in the U.K. The increases correlated with a surge in unemployment and an economic slump triggered by currency devaluations in Asia in mid-1997, he said.
“Around the time of the recession, we saw an acute rise in the unemployment rate and these changes seemed to be associated with the economic crisis and the rise in the suicide rate,” Chang said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “We concluded that changes in unemployment rates might contribute to some of the rise in the suicide rate.”
The current financial market crisis risks creating a new wave of suicides in the region, particularly among working-age men, Chang said. Asia accounts for 60 percent of the world’s suicides, according to the World Health Organization. Hong Kong opened 24-hour hotlines this week to provide counseling to people with “emotional and family problems” arising from personal financial crises.
The world’s largest financial institutions have posted $636 billion in losses and writedowns since the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market. Banks worldwide have slashed more than 137,000 jobs since June 2007.
Social and economic policy measures “are important for preventing suicide during a recession, particularly for the working-age population who become unemployed or have financial difficulties during the recession,” Chang said. “For clinicians, when evaluating suicide risks, special attention should also be paid to this population.”
His study, which is under review for publication, will be presented at an international meeting on suicide prevention in Hong Kong later this month, Chang said. It’s based on an analysis of suicides from 1985 to 2006 in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
“The data suggests the difference between countries might be related to the difference in the severity of economic recession in individual countries,” Chang said.
