(Obvious answer is socialism but I would like more specifics)

Often China, South Korea and Japan are treated as the “big three” of stress and expectations. Between their similar college entrance exams, demanding work schedules and environments, and social expectations for people to work hard and get rich and such.

But looking at suicide rates (which are only one piece of the puzzle of course) China places fairly low, at about 6.7 per 100,000 according to Wikipedia, half of Japan’s and nearly a quarter of south korea’s. Interestingly this is not just a cultural difference, as the Chinese province of Taiwan reports about 16 per 100,000 people, which is even higher than Japan. It also isn’t the just case of a high density population compared to low density like Finland and Iceland, since Japan and the ROK fit this designation as well (as well as India, who has a rate even higher than Japan’s)

The obvious answer is socialism, but that’s a little broad and not how you actually solve things. Not to mention that cuba has a decently high rate too (although considering their current impoverishment it’s not surprising). So what happened specifically? Poverty alleviation sure but that can’t be all of it, I don’t think so anyway.

(Additional notes and questions

A.The DPRK has a rate of 8, nearly a third of the ROK, suck it fake korea

B.Why is venezuala’s rate so low? From the source Wikipedia uses its one of the lowest in the world, despite the generally high poverty and instability

C.Why is Afganistan’s so low? Unsure if anyone has a concrete answer to this but I’m curious)

  • trashxeosEnglish
    18·
    10 months ago

    But when you are stuck working constantly, exhausted, hurting, and just barely making ends meet, and know that if you stop you’ll go hungry… that is what makes people want to end it all.

    I feel this in my soul. My wife has had years of on and off illnesses and because the doctors cared more about getting beds turned over healing the root cause, it took her 10+ years to get her gallbladder removed. Because she was so sick going into it, it took way too long to recover and she’s been struggling to get anyone to give her a new chance. All of this stacks up to a metric ton of mental health issues (she gets sick from stress some days) and more struggles. My son had been helping us keep afloat but he also just got canned recently. So my one income, which will barely cover rent and food, isn’t going to be enough. If one or both of them doesn’t land full time employment before the end of the month, we’re going to default on basically everything. I’m only able to maintain my sanity by reminding myself that if I lose my mind, my wife will be absolutely inconsolable. If I could live somewhere that a basic job actually made for a good life, I’d move yesterday. Sadly, I don’t have anything skills that would land me a job in China, so I have to just keep on keeping on for now.

      • trashxeosEnglish
        7·
        10 months ago

        Thankfully, this happened just after a Costco run so we’re not going to starve right away, I’m more worried about missing payments on bills in a couple of months when the little bit we’d squirreled away runs out. If things go well and one or both of them can get back to work before the end of the month/early March, we shouldn’t be too bad, but I will definitely look at some of those. We’re on an NVMO provider already, so our bill is less expensive than the big 3 at least. It’s just overwhelming to think about and I’m just trying to keep myself sane.