Big names who "glamorise" suicide
By Steve Dow
June 19 2003
Rene Rivkin has become the newest addition to a pantheon that includes the late singers Kurt Cobain and Michael Hutchence: male celebrities who "glamorise" suicide as a way out.
The stockbroker said in an interview aired on the ABC's Enough Rope recently that he would think about killing himself if he lost an appeal against an insider-trading conviction.
He may have been either flippant or genuine with his remarks, says an expert. However, Queensland University psychiatrist and suicidologist, Professor Graham Martin, says that either way, Rivkin's comments should not be ignored and due care should be taken.
"He's playing around with the idea of suicide in a public arena in a way that glamorises it," says Martin. "He's helping to build into the Australian psyche the idea that, if life gets bad, you [commit] suicide: that's what you do if you're a bloke."
The 10th national suicide prevention conference, held in Brisbane last week , was told that despite the Federal Government allocating at least $70 million to the problem in the past decade, Australia's high suicide rate has not significantly shifted.
advertisement
advertisement
The rate peaked in 1997, when 2720 suicides were registered in Australia, or 14.6 deaths per 100,000 people. In 2001, on latest figures available, 2454 Australians took their own lives, or 12.5 per 100,000.
Martin says the rate has been about 13 per 100,000 since the 1960s. Male suicides still consistently outnumber female suicides in Australia four to one.
Suicide as a demonstration of emotions that cannot be expressed may particularly be an Australian male problem, says Martin, who studied suicide rates among young men in Australia after the American singer Cobain killed himself in 1994.
There is not always a copycat effect, Martin says.
In the case of Cobain, this may have been because his wife, the singer Courtney Love, criticised his death as a waste of life, he says. In 1997, the singer Michael Hutchence died, and his death was later ruled a suicide by a coroner.
Rivkin, who spent a great deal of his insider-trading trial fingering his worry beads, may have hinted at a solution: conference delegates discussed the idea that a return to spirituality, including religious belief, may help reduce the suicide toll.
"We know that many people who struggle with mental illness find succour in some belief," says Martin.
"It's just that therapists have not explored this in recent times."
By Steve Dow
June 19 2003
Rene Rivkin has become the newest addition to a pantheon that includes the late singers Kurt Cobain and Michael Hutchence: male celebrities who "glamorise" suicide as a way out.
The stockbroker said in an interview aired on the ABC's Enough Rope recently that he would think about killing himself if he lost an appeal against an insider-trading conviction.
He may have been either flippant or genuine with his remarks, says an expert. However, Queensland University psychiatrist and suicidologist, Professor Graham Martin, says that either way, Rivkin's comments should not be ignored and due care should be taken.
"He's playing around with the idea of suicide in a public arena in a way that glamorises it," says Martin. "He's helping to build into the Australian psyche the idea that, if life gets bad, you [commit] suicide: that's what you do if you're a bloke."
The 10th national suicide prevention conference, held in Brisbane last week , was told that despite the Federal Government allocating at least $70 million to the problem in the past decade, Australia's high suicide rate has not significantly shifted.
advertisement
advertisement
The rate peaked in 1997, when 2720 suicides were registered in Australia, or 14.6 deaths per 100,000 people. In 2001, on latest figures available, 2454 Australians took their own lives, or 12.5 per 100,000.
Martin says the rate has been about 13 per 100,000 since the 1960s. Male suicides still consistently outnumber female suicides in Australia four to one.
Suicide as a demonstration of emotions that cannot be expressed may particularly be an Australian male problem, says Martin, who studied suicide rates among young men in Australia after the American singer Cobain killed himself in 1994.
There is not always a copycat effect, Martin says.
In the case of Cobain, this may have been because his wife, the singer Courtney Love, criticised his death as a waste of life, he says. In 1997, the singer Michael Hutchence died, and his death was later ruled a suicide by a coroner.
Rivkin, who spent a great deal of his insider-trading trial fingering his worry beads, may have hinted at a solution: conference delegates discussed the idea that a return to spirituality, including religious belief, may help reduce the suicide toll.
"We know that many people who struggle with mental illness find succour in some belief," says Martin.
"It's just that therapists have not explored this in recent times."
