Depression, Suicide, and Asian American Women. I've mused about this occasionally and have always come to the (rather unsatisfactory) conclusion that it's the pressure to perform and conform. They may be major reasons but they're not the only reasons. And sometimes, when I'm feeling rather perverse, I think other Asian women are just nuts--I've been in black moods before, but it's never been so bad that I ever think about ending it all. Compared to them, I'm as laid back as a lazy cat. But then I know that's unfair--because I have some sort of coping mechanism doesn't mean that others do.
Looking back on my interactions with other Asian girls, I think there is definitely something wrong about how the way society treats Asian American females. When I was in high school, I had a half-Korean friend who seemed to be in constant emotional agony and resentment because her Korean mother was putting more pressure on her to do well academically than her brother. While I was at Caltech, an Asian female chemistry grad student committed suicide by ingesting arsenic. Around the same time, I blogged about an MIT student who committed suicide by setting herself on fire. And when I was at Dartmouth, I had a housemate (female and Asian, of course) whose depression got so bad at one point that my other housemates and I had to stage an intervention.
Although society (and the Asian American community's expectations) consistently push the idea that failure is not an option, I'm at the point in my life where I can say, it's okay to be a failure at something. I've had people tell me that certain options were closed to me, but in reality, there is always opportunity. If someone trips me up, I'm going to try my damndest to get back up again. And sometimes, I just wonder if society has the morbidly romantic expectation of depressed Asian women committing suicide. The arts certainly doesn't do anything about dispelling it. It just makes me furious when those naysayers win by pushing someone towards oblivion.
I followed a link to this post, found it interesting, and tried to find more information. What I found was that it is not true. Asian American women between 15 and 24 have suicide rates no higher than the average, which is about 3 deaths per 100,000 population per year. The rates for Native Americans are more than twice as high, so Asians are not even close to having the highest rate. Rates for men are much higher also. The source of the fiction of Asian female suicide seems to be college professor named Eliza Noh, who is the main provider of information in most of the articles I found.
Where did you find your source of statistics? On the CDC website, it does state that Native Americans between 15 and 24 have the highest suicide rates, but I assume this was for both males and females and they only cited "CDC 2004" which tells me nothing.
(Aside: Hm. I also wonder if the numbers will be affected if we take into account that more females attempt suicide than males, but more males die by suicide due to their choice of method.)
Anyways, I looked at the numbers from Anderson and Smith 2003 which the CDC cites and find the percent of suicide for the following:
Female, Ages 15-19 All races: 7.0% Blacks: doesn't rate top 10 of causes of death White: 7.5% Hispanic: 7.9% Asian: 11.9% American Indian: 12.6%
Female, Ages 20-24 All races: 6.6% Blacks: doesn't rate top 10 of causes of death Hispanic: 6.0% White: 7.7% American Indian: 8.6% Asian: 14.6%
From 14-19, Am. Indian females have the highest rate (although less than 1% away from Asians), but how can we explain the more significant jump of the Asian female rate at the 20-24 age range?
I don't normally look at these types of papers, so if you can find more recent publications with up-to-date data, that would be great.
sya, I read your first comment response as "The Bell Jar" (rather than "Curve"). I guess because Plath did commit suicide but when I clicked the link...duh! I have been working too hard lately.
Anyway, I've been thinking about this post and the Bureau of Justice Statistics http://www.ncjrs.gov/ publishes reports on juvenile homicide and suicide, the most recent in 2006 (it includes data through 2004). It is broken down by race/ethnicity and gender, although the summaries and press releases don't break it down with those groups combined. The full report may, perhaps in the data tables at the end if not in the main report. I didn't check.
Statistics for age 18 to 34 can be found at http://209.217.72.34/HDAA/ReportFolders/ReportFolders.aspx
under 'mortality'. Asian female rates are lower than the average.
The numbers from Anderson and Smith are suicides as a percentage of total deaths. The Asian numbers are higher because their number of total deaths are lower.
