Suicide ‘barangay’

PINOY KASI

Suicide ‘barangay’
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:24am (Mla time) 06/01/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Imagine a community where people constantly talk about suicide, the way to go about it and the victims they had known.

One such community exists -- a “barangay” [village] in Palawan province -- catching the attention of French anthropologist Charles MacDonald, who eventually discovered that there had indeed been many suicides in the community. He went on to investigate and wrote a book, “Uncultural Behavior,” just published by the University of Hawaii Press and available, I am told, at Solidaridad Bookshop on Padre Faura Street in Manila.

The title is appropriate, given that the Philippines has one of the world’s lowest suicide rates. The 2000 Philippine Health Statistics from the Department of Health reports only a few thousand deaths that year from “intentional self-harm.” In medical statistical terms, that is something like 1.8 per 100,000 people. Compare that to the highest rates in the world, which are found in Russia and the Eastern European countries, with figures ranging from 30 to 42 per 100,000.

Certainly, the actual rate in the Philippines is probably higher, with many doctors agreeing not to report deaths as suicides because of the stigma. But even if we could get the true figure, it would probably still be relatively low.

Some countries have a more liberal view of suicide, seeing this mainly as an individual decision that has to be respected. There are even organizations now that talk of the “right to die,” especially when facing a terminal illness.

In other cultures (Japan being the most well-known example), suicide is seen as an acceptable way of making amends for having brought shame to the family, the community or even the nation. Just this week, the agriculture minister hanged himself following allegations that he had improperly accepted “gifts.” Another official followed suit shortly after.

Contrast that behavior with our officials who, even with glaring evidence of major wrongdoing, will insist on their “right” to remain in office.

Suicide profiles

MacDonald uses the term “Kulbi people” to refer to his study community, which is a subgroup of the indigenous Palawano. From the Kulbi’s recollections, MacDonald found 56 cases of suicide from 1979 to 2000. The figure may seem small but remember this barangay’s population is only 1,500.

Using a more careful study of cohorts, MacDonald calculates the suicide rate for the Kulbi to be 136 per 100,000 between 1990 and 2000, and 173 between 1990 and 2001 -- staggering figures when you look at the highest country suicide rates. MacDonald gives a table of rates reported for small tribal groups, and the Kulbi are second only to the Aguaruna of Peru, where a rate of 180 per 100,000 was reported.

Macdonald also collected information on the reported causes of 87 suicides and grouped them into “melancholy suicides” (common among older people), “gender relations suicides,” “passionate and angry suicides,” “multiple suicides out of grief” (a chain of suicides, or cluster suicides) and “impulsive suicides of teenagers.”

MacDonald tests different explanations for suicide by probing deeply into Kulbi society and culture. He leaves no stone unturned, looking into everything, from the natural environment to kinship and politics, from concepts of “personhood, emotions and moral values” to religion.

Each chapter in MacDonald’s book suggests “answers” to the suicide riddle, until you get to the next one and realize that the answers seem to create even more riddles. For example, as MacDonald describes the Kulbi’s great sense of autonomy, and the lack of hierarchical structures, one is tempted to think that maybe they’re similar to many Western societies where individuals are left on their own to decide. Yet, MacDonald links this autonomy to the Kulbi’s overwhelming fear of society, an unwillingness to confront critics or judges. A 13-year-old boy, for example, had caught his grandmother’s chicken in a snare. His siblings told him his grandmother would hang him for the misdeed. The boy hanged himself.

At the end of his suicide “profiles,” MacDonald notes that a common denominator to the suicides is pain or stress, whether, physical, mental or emotional. “The suicide,” MacDonald proposes, “wants to stop hurting.”

Thankfully, MacDonald doesn’t end with that explanation. He rejects biological or genetic explanations, as well as the idea that there may be a whole melancholic cultural personality at work. He looks to other studies conducted among small groups, looking for possible correlations with the predisposition to suicide, from the presence of organized violence to a belief in vengeful souls.

Even without the focus on suicide, MacDonald’s description of the community is exhaustive and makes the book a good buy.

In the end, after excluding different theories, he suggests a wave theory, meaning that at some point in the past, some catastrophic event such as an epidemic may have spurred a surge of suicides and that with time, suicide became somewhat acceptable.

It’s difficult to prove that wave theory, but it does give food for thought, maybe even a warning. In more urbanized and industrial areas throughout the world, including Metro Manila, we occasionally find cluster suicides -- one suicide setting off another. Japan has been facing the problem of group suicides involving younger people who meet and eventually forge a suicide “pact” through the Internet.

Public health

MacDonald’s work is an example of how the social sciences can contribute to public health -- in this case, to suicide prevention. So many characteristics of Kulbi society -- individualism amid continuing fear of authority -- are in fact found throughout the Philippines and may help to explain suicide even among urbanized Filipinos.

MacDonald’s study raises questions about the vulnerability of small communities like the Kulbi. Is it possible that they might reach a critical “tipping point” more easily? Or could a small community act faster to prevent suicides from becoming an acceptable norm? Given, too, that we now live in a world where isolation is almost impossible, does the outside world (in the Kulbi case, the Philippine mainstream) have any impact on the Kulbi, reversing or reinforcing the current suicide trend?

Beyond suicide, however, MacDonald’s study challenges our ideas about culture. We tend to presume culture is shared and that people happily observe the norms. His study shows that culture is much more complex, that even with a kind of national norm like what we have for suicide, there can be significant exceptions. In the Kulbi case, what passes as deviance from a national norm is in fact the small-group norm.

As MacDonald’s book shows, understanding the “uncultural” provides the key to unlocking the many mysteries of “culture.”