Stephen But it seems that suicide rates would be exactly the wrong measure. People who have committed suicide are presumably not answering questions about how happy they are. It is also worth noting that an international comparison of suicide rates is tricky business because the amount of stigma associated with suicide greatly affects the extent to which that particular cause of death shows up on the death certificate.
Now you might reasonably say that before people commit suicide they experience suicidal ideation and those folks would probably not rate themselves as very happy. But then we would want to look at international comparisons of suicidal ideation which do not necessarily mirror the rates of actual suicides (people might admit to suicidal ideation but not carry out the suicide). In addition, both suicide rates and suicidal ideation are rare and therefore not likely to greatly influence the happiness reports of the vast amount of folks. I'm not an expert on this topic although I did publish a paper on suicidal ideation among Danes (see abstract below). On a related note you might find this article interesting (the first author was the scientist interviewed in the 60 min pieces): Why Danes are smug: comparative study of life satisfaction in the European Union by Kaare Christensen, Anne Maria Herskind, James W Vaupel. I think it is available for free at the BMJ website (at least the comments are) http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1289 Marie Kjøller, M., & Helweg-Larsen, M. (2000). Suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among adult Danes. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 78, 54-61. pdf version of article This study describes the prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempted suicide among adults in Denmark and the proportion of people reporting a suicide attempt that results in contact with the health care system. The data for the 1994 Danish national health interview survey were collected by personal interview and a self-administered questionnaire. A subsample of 1362 individuals participated in the part of the survey addressing suicidal behavior (64% of the random sample). Results show that 6.9% reported having had suicidal thoughts within the past year. Averaging across all age groups the overall prevalence of reporting ever having had a suicide attempt was 3.4% and the one-year prevalence was 0.5%. Suicidal ideation was more prevalent among young people than older people, whereas ever attempted suicide showed no age gradient. Both suicidal ideation and ever attempted suicide were more prevalent among economically inactive people (e.g., unemployed) and among unmarried or divorced people. We estimate that 50-60% of suicide attempts reported in a representative, national survey become known to the health care system. **************************************************** Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013 Office: (717) 245-1562, Fax: (717) 245-1971 http://alpha.dickinson.edu/departments/psych/helwegm **************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 10:50 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Why Danes are the happiest people on earth On 21 Feb 2008 at 15:10, Helweg-Larsen, Marie wrote: > You mind find this segment interesting from 60 minutes especially if > you teach about positive psychology or happiness more generally. The > first half explains why Denmark in particular might have such > happy/content people (although it would have been nice had they also > mentioned living wages, equality, respect, etc.) and the second half > talks about positive psychology. > http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/140/happiness. You can click on each > segment or only the first one (which should play them all). > > Marie (a happy Dane who would obviously be much happier if she had > socialized medicine and low expectations) The 60 Minutes report was on White et al of Leicester University, UK (who got their data from Marks et al, _The Happy Planet Index_, 2006, among others). The measure was self-reported subjective happiness from which they constructed what they modestly refer to as the "first ever world map of happiness". It seems that the happiest nation on earth is...wait for it...Denmark. Congratulations, Marie! The study is probably this one: White, A. (2007). A Global Projection of Subjective Well-being: A Challenge To Positive Psychology? Psychtalk 56, 17-20. http://www.le.ac.uk/users/aw57/world/sample.html More information is available in the news release at http://tinyurl.com/h26b9 and see BBC news "Denmark happiest place on earth' at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5224306.stm, where you can view their world happy map. But not so fast, happy-breath. Denmark??? The land where nights are long (and cold), where herring is eaten raw, and where a gloomy suicidal prince roams the halls of Elsinor? I don't buy it. The Danes may _say_ they're happy, but are they really? I checked the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics on suicide at http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/ and combined the data to get an overall rate for each country, arranged by rank. Denmark ranks higher in suicide rate (14.5 per 100, 000) than 73 other countries in a list of 100. By comparison, Canada's rate is higher than 63 countries with 12.3, the US rate is higher than 57 with 10.8, and the UK 's higher than 45 with 7.6 The suicide rate in Denmark is 90% higher in Denmark than it is in the UK. On this measure, the Danes don't look so cheerful. If they're so darned happy, why are they shuffling off that mortal coil at such an alarming rate? Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
