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GKB47 and suicide

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Let’s talk about suicide for a moment… not that it's the most pleasant of topics. I try now and then with my more advanced Japanese students. Most clearly feel uncomfortable discussing it.

Even on trains, the word is somewhat taboo. “Human accident,” the screens say. In the distant past, it was more bluntly referred to by the word “rekishi” – "reki" referring to the roaring noise of a train, and "shi," for death. The term was coined over a hundred years ago. Soseki wrote stories about it.

Today, Japan has a suicide rate of about 33,000 a year. The suicides aren’t just personal… they’re economic. One study has suggested that the problem of suicide costs Japan about 2.7 trillion yen a year.

Just to put things in perspective – 2.7 trillion yen is about equal to the current Japanese trade deficit. It also represents the Japanese government’s current post 3/11 reconstruction approved disaster relief budget. According to one U.N. study, it is even enough money to eradicate all the hunger in the world.

As a result, you'd think Japanese politicians would take the problem seriously. But actually, it wasn’t until 1998 -- when Japan suddenly experienced a spike of 32% in its national suicide rate -- that the central government began to even address the problem.

Now it is unclear whether the heat over a controversial suicide prevention poster was one of those trivial Monday afternoon Diet debate points that get tossed out by politicians in hopes of being picked up by media, or sincere gripes, but it was serious enough for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to quickly distance himself from it, and almost immediately Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada agreed to trash 3 million yen worth of taxpayer-funded posters.

The furor began with a poster directing people to websites and social media resources promoting Japan’s Gateway 47 basic program – referenced by the catchy easy-to-remember slogan “You too are the GKB47!” The catchphrase evokes images of popular all-girl group AKB48.

The program originated about a decade ago and started as “Health Japan 21”, an initiative to expand localized suicide prevention initiatives to cover all 47 prefectures.

“Gatekeeper” refers to an approach, which aims to develop individuals’ knowledge, attitudes and skills to identify people most at risk – and make sure they are aware of the resources available to help them.

At the time, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s goal was to lower the suicide rate to below 22,000 by 2010. The program focused strongly upon workplace intervention, while concurrently, the Ministry of Education also implemented school reforms as well, some triggered by a number of suicides and high profile lawsuits related to them amplifying the school bullying problem.

Unfortunately, while many localized programs yielded significant results, the program failed to catch on nationally and the suicide rate continued to rise.

Frustrated, a group of concerned citizens, mainly families impacted by the suicides of loved ones, began a campaign and collected 10,000 signatures asking for the government to take the problem seriously. The result was the passage of the Basic Act for Suicide Prevention. Its goal is to reduce the national suicide rate by 20% by 2016.

The Japanese government’s approach is straightforward. Study the problem, identify high-risk segments of the population, implement programs.

This is where Gateway 47 comes in. The Gateway approach requires getting everyone in the community involved… from physicians to caretakers, employers, municipal employees and the general public as well; hence the slogan, “You’re also a member...”

The fact is, Japan’s suicide epidemic is widespread. While there is no single ministry or organization that can make it go away, via coordinated efforts, lives can still, nonetheless, be saved.

Take, for example, Japan’s largest risk factor group -- men in their 50s. In recent years, workplace intervention programs have been implemented and as result, it is actually one of the few segments of Japanese society that has seen a decline in its numbers. Still, men in this age group make up about 27% of all suicides.

Another hard-hit segment of the population is the elderly. Over one in three people who commit suicide in Japan are aged 60 and over. In response, programs have been developed that educate physicians to screen for depression. Visitation programs and programs to keep senior citizens active and involved in their community have also been implemented. Numerous municipal initiatives have reduced suicides in some populations up to 27% or more, but as the senior citizen population increases, so too do problems related to health, pension and rural isolation, so the numbers continue to grow.

On top of all of this, there’s the emergence of new “at-risk” demographics.

In recent years, suicides of college students and men and women in their 20s and 30s have been rising. Related to this, the term “shokuba utsu” has arisen, which literally translates as “depression in the workplace.” In one survey, more than 26% of businesses surveyed said they had cases of workers resigning or taking leave for mental health reasons.

In the end, Japan’s problem of suicide represents the dynamics of a society that is large, complex and rapidly changing. The only hope to reduce the problem is to identify those at risk and try to get them help before its too late. A key challenge is that this is also a society where open discussion of suicide is somewhat taboo. A suicide, for example, can evoke so much shame that the apartment of a person where one was committed may go unoccupied for years. Landlords have actually sued surviving family members. People simply don’t want to live in such a place.

Now, there’s a situation where public health officials have tried to raise awareness of a program via a poster that aims to get people to stop and pay attention for a few seconds in a milieu where dozens of other public awareness posters are competing for their attention. Yet some lawmakers were offended.

It begs the question: just how aware is this administration of the problem anyway?

© Japan Today

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13 Comments
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Great piece, Eddie.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Excellent overview of the government-initiated suicide prevention program.

It seems the over-50 age group comprises over half of the suicides (men and elderly over 60). Are the men employed or recently laid off? If laid off, perhaps they are burdened with a sense of failure - failure as a breadwinner, as an employee. This might lead to being isolated. And Isolation in this island country might be a problem - isolated from the group, isolated from society, from family.

Question:

Just to put things in perspective - 32 billion yen is about equal to the current Japanese trade deficit. It also represents the Japanese government's current post 3/11 reconstruction approved disaster relief budget. According to one U.N. study, it is even enough money to eradicate all the hunger in the world.

This paragraph states that 32 billion yen can eradicate all the hunger in the world. Really? Bill Gates can stop hunger with his pocket change? The previous paragraph mentions 2.7 trillion, but that is in the previous paragraph. All the "it" in this paragraph refers to 32 billion.

Maybe if the government were to look at suicide as a financial problem - money out of a politician's pocket via kickbacks, er, donations - they would start doing something seriously about the number of suicides (more than car accidents - about 5,000; bicycle accidents - about 300; and marijuana drug overdoses - maybe 0; combined).

And, as much as the editors don't like comparing Japan to other countries, it would be interesting to see how Finland is addressing their suicide rate (down 30% since 1990 - their prevention program started in 1987).

Editors - Typos

began toe even

Drop an 'e', preferably in 'toe'.

slogan "You too are the GTB47!"

I believe we are the GKB47, not the GTB47, which, I believe, was a great little MG.

collected10,000

A space would be nice - maybe between the 'd' and the one?

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

Do you think that the reason the government doesn't do much about it is because its actually a real issue? Democracy is a farce.

-4 ( +1 / -4 )

I like your articles Eddie. Keep up the good work.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Why did it suddenly spike in 1998? Consumption tax rise from 3% to 5% the previous year??

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

When the news broke about the Diet flap over the GKB47 poster many people(on this site too) ridculed the name. So now they are trashing the posters and a campaign that actually got the public's attention. Maybe the politician's true motives are to dodge this issue.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

this site has become a veritable repository for pieces of journalism on human interest stories penned with an infusion of sincerity that boggles the mind.

i would say that the slogan associated with the silly and contrives entertainment group trivializes the problems and the politicians are right to have come out against it, after being derelict in preventing it in the first place.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Since I wake up every morning with the name of my loved one on my lips and wish she had not taken her own life, and since it was Japan that I went to to find peace and consolation over my unending loss of the girl I loved, I can only say that even the smallest attempt to address this problem is a positive step, be it in the form of a poster, or a posting to this article on this web site. The memory of my loved one never leaves me, and the fact of suicide continues every new day. In honor of my Alexandra, more needs to be done to prevent the loss of another beautiful life.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

i really hope their suicide rate fall down quickly

0 ( +0 / -0 )

@ nukeprotest and Psyyops

If people want to die that bad, then its not really our place to stop them. Counseling and trying to talk them out of it is of course wonderful. But if after our little talk they still want to die, they should be able to do it with dignity, quickly, and painlessly with drugs provided by a pharmacist. No mess. No police. No stopped trains

Wow. Your cold callousness is only matched by your ignorance, because you write like two people who know nothing of the loss of suicide. And I assure you, reading the 'human accident' message on the screen on the Yamanote line doesn't qualify. Your suggested solution here is....do nothing. Ignore their pain, ignore their mental illness and just give them a quiet space to do what they will inevitibly do. Do me a favour - read Jay Que's post. Read it properly. Don't skim it, look at what is there. Do you think the person he writes so achingly about is such a trivial matter? I lost my brother to suicide. You CAN"T IMAGINE the horror of it. I hope you never have to. But make no mistake, the best thing is to have this very conversation and for the government to take initiatives to educate people, to realize how common mental illness is - what a SHARED experience it is, and to create measures to help people who are suffering from them get through their experience to a place where things are better for them. Because, here is what you don't get. Suicide has a terrible flow on effect on all the people who knew and loved that person. That can be a lot of people. The problems that that person were going through are then magnified and left with everyone else, so not only do you lose a beautiful person, but many lives surrounding that person are irreversibly damaged. It's very much a two-fold cost, and very much worth fighting to prevent. You'll never convince me otherwise.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Mods, here is some feedback for you. If you do not want people to post with passion and conviction about certain topics, then don't run the topics in the first place. And certainly do not expect that flippant, uninformed and insensitive posts by people to go unnoticed by others. You have a responsibility to moderate properly here - so if you leave those comments in, then be prepared for what the backlash is and do not censor us for posting strongly in return. You are being inconsistant at this point. I notice you have removed the original cack now, but you had left it in for a long time - a week in fact. You need to be better, or allow more open and freer discussion.

Moderator: And you and all readers have a responsibility to keep the discussion at a high level by following the rules of the discussion board, no matter what the topic is. It is a simple thing to do, as any high school debating student learns.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

This isn't working, my friend killed himself today because he lost his job, freaking JP government trying to look cool and put a band-aid on this rather than fixing the problem.

I want to see stats of actual suicide rates being decreased rather than something that sounds good on paper!

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Don't know why you would bother voting my comments down on an old article.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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