Good Students and Bad Problems
Updated: Sep 19
A friend sent me a video that’s got a little age on it—a 2017 graphic representation of worldwide suicide rates. But it made a modern-day point based on World Health Organization (WHO) statistics that about 800,000 people commit suicide every year. It was the fourth leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds, the group to which my son Patrick belonged when he died in 2006 at 23.
In 2019, the number went down to 703,000. Among the 183 countries listed, the US ranked twenty-second with 16.1 suicides per 100,000, well above the average of 9.1 per 100,000. The highest ranked by far was the country of Lesotho with 72.4 suicides per 100,000.
Lesotho is a “landlocked, mountainous kingdom of 2.3 million people encircled by South Africa,” according to a Telegraph newspaper story. in February 2024, it had an even higher suicide rate of 87.5 per 100,000. The reasons: poverty, drug abuse, lack of mental health treatment, and, low awareness of mental health issues. Mental illness was a “white man’s disease” seen on television. Staff at the one mental health hospital in the country said some wards had twice as many patients as capacity. Drug addiction was one of the biggest problems.
I tucked these reasons away as common beliefs about suicide. They were how I used to feel about the causes of suicide: poverty, drugs, lack of mental health treatment, and stigma. My son Patrick had none of these causes, and yet he suffered as if he did.
The Telegraph highlighted Potsane Mohale, a gifted student at a prestigious Lesotho school. He skipped a grade because of his ability, but the advancement caused severe bullying. He was mocked and beaten whenever he did well. At one point, he was kicked so hard that a testicle had to be removed. He went for counseling, but he knew his injuries would make him a bigger target. Men are supposed to be tough in Lesotho. Asking for help is a sign of weakness. Instead, Potsane killed himself at age 17 after passing exams in mathematics, communicating study skills, and introduction to computers. He killed himself after a message to his father that he wanted to make him proud.
Patrick taught me that good students have bad problems like everyone else, but great students have greater problems. They look like the person everyone wants to be. But that wanting creates envy, resentment, and in the case of Potsane, inescapable bullying. Patrick was not bullied as far as I know. His twin sister Libby looked out for him in high school, but he was still terrified. He took circuitous routes to classes to avoid certain students. Call it depression or stress or social anxiety. All combined to make him feel like a target whether he was or he wasn’t. That’s what depression did to him. In Back from Suicide, I learned it doesn’t matter if the problems come from within or without. It doesn’t matter if they come from poverty or ability in poor countries or rich. The effect is the same. They are equally deadly. “White man’s disease” is palpable, physical, and just as real for good students as it is for those who never see a classroom.
Sources
“Suicide” August 28, 2023, World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide. Accessed August 4, 2024
“Suicide Rate by Country 2024” https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-rate-by-country. Accessed August 4, 2024
Ben Farmer, Manasupha Moshoeshoe, and Simon Townsley, “’What kind of man cries?’: The country with the highest suicide rate in the world: Mental illness is described as a ‘white man’s disease’ in Lesotho—it’s a mindset with deadly consequences,” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/lesotho-worlds-highest-suicide-rates-mens-mental-health-africa/. Accessed August 4, 2024.
Comments