評論
打印
Staying alive
活著
Why suicide is falling around the world, and how to bring the numbers down further still
為何世界各地自殺率都有下降？如何進一步降低自殺率？
“You know,” says a trader in “Margin Call”, a film about the crash of 2008, as he stands high on a building above Wall Street, “the feeling that people experience when they stand on the edge like this isn’t the fear of falling—it’s the fear that they might jump.” Suicide fascinates us. It is at once appalling and yet, in the darkest places in our minds, appealing. It is the most damaging sort of death. A child’s suicide is a parent’s worst nightmare, and a parent’s marks their children for life. It is a manifestation not just of individual anguish but also of a collective failure: if society is too painful to live in, perhaps we are all culpable.
自2000年以來，美國的自殺率上升了18%。這不僅僅是一場悲劇；在政治上也有很大影響。自殺主要發生在教育程度低下的白人中年男性，他們身處的地區在繁榮時期受到遺忘，在蕭條時期卻遭到碾壓。其死亡預示著某些問題，一些人將美國總統唐納德•特朗普視為問題根源。這些問題不應被忽視。
The suicide rate in America is up by 18% since 2000. This is not merely a tragedy; it matters politically, too. The rise is largely among white, middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts. Their deaths are a symptom of troubles to which some see President Donald Trump as the answer. Those troubles should not be ignored.
自2000年以來，美國的自殺率上升了18%。這不僅僅是一場悲劇；在政治上也有很大影響。被經濟繁榮拋在后面而又經歷了蕭條時期的地區自殺率上升，自殺主要發生在白皮膚、中年、受教育程度較低的男性中。其死亡預示著某些問題，一些人將美國總統唐納德•特朗普視為問題根源。這些問題不應被忽視。
Nonetheless, beyond America’s gloomy trend is a more optimistic story: that at a global level, suicide is down by 29% since 2000. As a result, 2.8m lives have been saved in that time—three times as many as have been killed in battle. There is no one reason. It is happening at different rates among different groups in different places. But the decline is particularly notable among three sets of people.
盡管如此，在美國黯淡的趨勢之外，還有一個更為樂觀的故事：自2000年以來，全球自殺率下降了29%。結果同時，有280萬人獲救——是在戰爭中喪生人數的三倍。原因不盡相同。在不同地區、不同群體中，這種情況以不同速度發生。但在三類人群中，這種下降尤為明顯。
One is young women in China and India. In most of the world, older people kill themselves more often than the young, and men more than women. But in China and India, young women have been unusually prone to suicide. That is decreasingly the case. Another group is middle-aged men in Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, alcoholism and suicide rocketed among them. Both have now receded. A third category is old people all around the world. The suicide rate among the elderly remains, on average, higher than among the rest of the population, but has also fallen faster since 2000 than among other groups.
一類是中國和印度的年輕女性。在世界大多數地方，老年人自殺比年輕人多，而男性自殺比女性多。但在中國和印度，年輕女性的自殺傾向異乎尋常。這種情況正在逐漸減少。另一個群體是俄羅斯的中年男性。蘇聯解體后，酗酒和自殺在他們中間激增。現在兩者都已衰退。第三類是世界各地的老年人。老年人平均自殺率高于其他年齡段的人。但自2000年以來，這一比例的下降速度也快于其他群體。
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