SCIENCE-PERU: Death at Christmas

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Dec 23 1998 (IPS) - Doctor and university professor Romulo Puga killed himself with a lethal injection of air to the jugular on December 21, bringing the number of seasonal suicides in Peru’s capital to 20 in the last 10 days.

This death toll is put down to the “Christmas blues,” a feeling of alienation suffered by some people as the holiday which most celebrates household wellbeing and social solidarity approaches.

And modern psychiatry explains this syndrome with surprising new arguments.

Puga, a successful professional, physically healthy and emotionally sound, appeared to have no motive for locking himself in his office and injecting himself with an air bubble large enough to cause a heart attack.

Nor was there apparently any valid reason for the other 19 deaths, but perhaps the Puga case can help reveal the hidden motives of such suicides.

Whenever a suicide occurs, people tend to look for the external cause: bad luck in love, economic hardship, unbearable stress or frustration.

But in recent years, biological psychiatry has found a chemical factor in the emotional process of depression, which can lead to suicide. An alteration in the neurological mechanism which governs or conditions human conduct.

According to modern psychiatry, depression is a manifestation of an imbalance in the neurotransmitters, especially serotonin and nor-adrenalin.

“The unbalancing of these neurotransmitters generates difficulties in the control of impulses and when stress situations occur, a vulnerability of genetic origin flourishes in some individuals,” said psychiatrist Marta Rondon, of the Cayetano Heredia Medical University.

“In the so-called psychological autopsy – which consists of researching the psychological or psychiatric precedents of the suicides and their relatives, even in the cases of children and adolescents – most times there is some drug or alcohol use or behavioural or personality upsets,” explained Rondon.

“And physical autopsies carried out in New York on the bodies of suicide victims showed the majority had a lower than normal level of metabolic serotonin in their cerebral and spinal fluid. From which it can be deduced that vulnerability to suicide may include neurochemical factors,” he concluded.

“Suicide and suicidal thinking are mental health problems, because although the protagonist considers their situation unbearable or can not find any reason to live, the normal response in nature is to tackle the problems to overcome them, or adapt to them,” said psychiatrist Freddy Vasquez.

According to Vasquez, head of the Suicide Prevention Care Programme in Peru’s Mental Health Institute, the average suicide rate in Lima is around 20 cases per month, with peaks at certain times of year, like the run up to Christmas.

The wave of Christmas suicides does not happen exclusively in Lima, indeed it responds to the greater incidence of critical depressive conditions which occur practically throughout the world at certain times of year, and in given social circumstances.

The run up to Christmas and St. Valentine’s day (February 14) are the periods of most suicide attempts in Peru, stated Vasquez.

In the Christmas period, the suicides tend to be adult males, aged over 50 years’ old or approaching this age, generally taking the decision through loneliness or as a result of economic problems.

In February, as Saint Valentine’s day approaches, it is mainly young women who kill themselves, and the risk increases amongst children and adolescents as the end of the school year approaches.

On the third of this month, Catholic cardinal Agusto Vargas Alzamora, Archbishop of Lima, attributed a series of suicides amongst school age children to the atmosphere of domestic violence and the damaging influence of the media.

And Vargas Alzamora “is not far off the path,” said psychiatrist Mariano Querol, “because abused children are given to suicide and the journalistic coverage of such episodes spreads the trend,” said psychiatrist Mariano Querol. “There is a spate of child suicides following the report of each new case,” he added.

Querol pointed out that demands for better performance in school, and the humilliation of slow learning pupils by some teachers cause unbearable stress to children and the more sensitive of them may resort to suicide.

“In Japan and Switzerland there is a high incidence of child suicide, for example, as heavy demands are put upon them. It must not be forgotten that suicides can be prevented when depressive personalities are identified, and it is always better to have a child who doesn’t do so well at school than a dead child,” said Querol.