In 2000, the global suicide rate was 11.0, out of a population of 100,000 people. Fast forward to 2019. The global suicide rate has now jumped to 16.10 per 100,000 people. Since 2000, the suicide rate has been on a steady increase. According to the CDC, suicide deaths have raised around 25 percent in America in the last couple decades.
But how could this be?
This world is far from perfect, but it is objectively much better than it used to be. Most world leaders are not in favor of starting wars. Medicine has never been more effective and accessible. There are endless opportunities to succeed.
But still the suicide rates are at an all-time high, and showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Many people attribute higher suicide rates to more mental health issues. However, this doesn’t actually delve into the problem at all. Instead, it just puts a giant piece of duct tape over an even bigger box labeled “we don’t really know what is in here.”
So what is actually the real problem here? The trends don’t line up. The world is considered to be better and more prosperous than it ever has been before. So why are suicide rates higher than any other point in history?
The happiest nations have the most suicide deaths
The world happiness report is an annual study done by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. In the world happiness report, each country gets their own “happiness score.”
Every year, countries like Finland and Denmark score high on this happiness score, meaning that their population is generally happier than the rest of the world. If these countries are generally rated as the happiest countries in the world, one would think it would be safe to assume that they probably have low suicide rates.
Wrong.
Finland has been ranked as one of the happiest nations numerous times by the world happiness report. Yet they have a suicide rate of 15.9, which is extremely high.
For comparison, Syria had a suicide rate of 1.9 in 2016. In 2016, Syria was deep into a Civil War. Yet they still had a significantly lower suicide rate when compared to one of the happiest countries in the world.
This seems contradictory. But the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.
You see, when all you are trying to do is make it to the next sunrise, survival is your mind’s number one priority. It doesn’t have enough bandwidth to digest other issues.
But when all of your needs are met, your mind begins to create problems. And often these are problems with no solutions. Or, if your problems are solved, then your mind will simply create more.
This is where the mind comes in. The human mind is capable of doing some pretty incredible things. But at the same time, our greatest blessing as a species can also be our greatest curse.
Let me get into that.
Where does suffering come from?
While the world may be objectively better than it has ever been before, there are still some pretty horrible things that happen. The Covid-19 pandemic took many lives, and the war between Russia and Ukraine is an unnecessary conflict that will sadly result in a lot of death.
When these things that we think of as negative events take place, humans react with suffering. For terrible things like this, suffering and sadness is an appropriate response.
But too many times, our mind tricks us. Our mind makes us think that we are about to enter into a battlefield, when really, we just have to give a presentation to our classmates. We suffer in deep depression because we feel a little lonely or isolated, when in reality, there are so many worse alternatives.
This suffering doesn’t come from any external events. The patterns of all our suffering comes from our own mind.
In essence, our own mind chooses to suffer.
Because humans were not evolved to be satisfied, our brain is constantly looking for the next thing to worry about. As an evolutionary trait, this was very helpful. When trying to survive, it would not serve us well to be content to sit on the beach and appreciate nature. We would probably get eaten — or maybe forget that we have to eat and have no food.
But in the year 2022, we are far removed from having to worry about being eaten by saber tooth tigers. Most of us don’t have to worry about not being able to have food. Most of us in the first world are fortunate enough to have our needs met.
This is hard to do
I recently wrote about happiness and how you could be ‘a little bit happier.’
In this article, I wrote about the hedonic treadmill and how many times, we convince ourselves that we just need one thing to be happy. We just need a new job, a romantic partner, a raise.
Here is the problem: Once we get these things, they fail to really impact our happiness. We are thrilled for a couple of days, but these things eventually cease to make us happy.
Instead of appreciating what we have, our mind convinces us that we need more.
This is just how humans are designed.
It is so difficult to simply appreciate what you have in your life. It is much easier to look for what you don’t have instead of loving what you do.
It seems easy. It should be easy. But it is really, really hard to just be happy with what you have.
Here is a fun fact: The people who are able to appreciate and be grateful for what they have in life are the most happy people. They people who are always worried about what they don’t are the most unhappy.
Stop suffering imagined troubles
“There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality,” wrote Stoic philosopher Seneca.
Today, there are so many people suffering from these imagined troubles. We have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. Even the smallest problems have the potential to cause us great amounts of stress and anxiety.
But now that we know many of our problems are simply imagined, the question is how do we eliminate these imagined troubles from our mind?
The first step is to realize that our mind is going to create problems. Knowing that many of our problems are not real is the first step towards alleviating anxiety.
And even if many of these problems are imagined, there are still actions that we can take to “solve” them.
Don’t ever focus on just the problem. Focus on what you can do to solve the problem. And once you find out what you can do to solve the problem, then do it.
Doing the action is the hard part. I have found that many times our anxiety is rooted in the fact that we know the solution is going to require some pain.
The issue is that our problems don’t just go away. They will persist if we resist a solution.
Now, suffering is one hundred percent a real part of life and no matter what there will be moments of great suffering. This is unavoidable. The point of this article is not to diminish your suffering and say that you are wrong for feeling what you feel.
The point is to help you get out of your own head. The point is to help you make the realization that the giant mountain sized problems that you imagine in your head can sometimes end up being mere mole hills.
After all, why would you choose to suffer when you don’t have to?