Depression, suicide and cultural inertia

[ionelv]

There is a BBC headline today about Baek Se-hee, a 35-years old's Korean author's death. Since she struggled with depression and even published a book about it, her death was most likely due to suicide. In her youth, she dealt with self-esteem issues mainly due to her family's poverty (5 people living in a small on-bedroom apartment), her father's violence towards her mother and her domineering older sister. I am willing to bet that her situation is quite common for billions of people, which in itself, is a very depressing statistic.

I also wonder if contributing factors are: Western over-reliance on the nuclear family structure (without compensating community or govt support), deeply ingrained cultural overemphasis on comparing ourselves to our peers (in economic, physical, educational, linguistic, ethnic and even moral terms), patriarchy, heavily distorted gender roles and stigma cast upon divorced women and their offspring (that effectively lock them into abusive marriages in many cultures), lionizing overachievers and distorting the whole compensation/reward/recognition system towards it, generational trauma, etc.