Suicide in Japan: personal experience?

[undrentide]

Most insurance companies in Japan pay when suicide happens more than three years from the contract. It used to be 1-2 years but recently most insurance companies changed it to 3 years. Of course, when it is obvious that the purpose of the suicide is to get payment from insurance.

I have doubts if stopping insurance payment in case of suicide would prevent suicides, though. People who kill themselves do not think much about their family they're leaving behind. I've read that many families are facing financial problems after their husband/father committed suicide. I don't say that there are no one who wants to kill oneself believing that would at least provide one's family some money from life insurance, but such cases does not seem to be majority.

As for incitement, it really is a big problem - recently people who commit suicide using hydrogen sulphide gas because it is getting know through internet that it is very poisonous and easy to create as ingredients are readily available from drag stores and garden centres. Before that carbon monoxide using coal briquette inside a car was "popular", etc. Even now if you search on internet with "hydrogen sulphide" and "suicide" as key words (in Japanese), you'll find quite a few web pages explaining how to do it, some of them even showing detailed recipe for that. Giving such information on internet is a kind of incitement but it seems impossible to stop it.

There are one famous organization called 窶堋｢窶堙娯?堋ｿ窶堙娯?彭ﾋ彙, a telephone service for desperate people but that's not enough. I'm afraid that as Emoi pointed out we do not have enough mental health support, and there's tendency that people think they have to solve the problems themselves and generally people are not very good at asking for help in Japan.

Maybe a lot of announcement on TV asking "not kill yourself" and telling people there are organizations to turn to before thinking about suicide might help a bit? I'm not too sure if it really works... :?

 

[Hezam]

Suicide rate in Japan is high,30,000 suicide every year !! I wonder why ?
In my life i heard about one young man suicide in Yemen,He hang him self because his father rejected his request (don't know what he asked him ).
But here in Saudi Arabia i've never heard about one single suicide action !
Japanese are rich and Japan is 1000 times better than here so i wonder why many people suicide ?????

 

[let`s talk]

As for criminal law, inciting suicide isn't exactly the problem as far as I know. There aren't people on the train platform shouting "Jump!"

Incitement to suicide is not just shouting "jump" or helping a person to commit a suicide in any other form. It also includes threats, cruel treatment and systematic denigration of the human dignity of the victim. It is a crime in some countries, not in Japan. Most of suicides are committed here by overworked people as the reuslt of depression and stress provoked by their employers. Occasionally through the court the families could get some compensations from the company if it was proved that the worker had committed a suicide due to overwork. But it is not the same as a criminal responsibility of the company bosses who created abnormal human conditions for the victim.

 

[Nuala]

Japanese are rich and Japan is 1000 times better than here so i wonder why many people suicide ?????

Because happiness doesn't revolve around quality of life or riches.