*Why Live: How Suicide Becomes an Epidemic*

That is the new Helen C. Epstein book, which I found very instructive and useful.  My main wish is that it would be longer, in any case here is one very interesting excerpt of many:

If Nunavut, the semi-autonomous Canadian territory that is home to roughly 28,000 indigenous Inuit people, were an independent country, it would have the highest suicide rate in the world.  The suicide rate in Greenland, whose population is mostly Inuit, is 85 per 100,000; next highest is Lithuania, at 33 per 100,000.  Nunavut’s rate is 100 per 100,000, ten times higher than the rest of Canada and seven times higher than the US.  When I visited Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, in July, virtually every Inuit I met had lost at least some relative to suicide, and some recounted as many as five or six family suicides, plus those of friends, co workers ,and other acquaintances.  Three people in my small circle of contacts lost someone close to them to suicide during my nine-day visit.  Acquaintances would direct my attention to passersby on the street: “his older brother too,” “his son.”  Almost one-third of Nunavut Inuit have attmpted suicide, and most Inuit I met confided, without my asking that had done so at least once.

This book also is important for understanding the key phenomenon of negative emotional contagion.