See the genetic Finno-Ugrian Suicide Hypothesis.

the ugric contribution to the hungarian gene pool is probably around 5%, so it is not likely due to deep common ancestry (the lack of such between finland and hungary is evident in recent studies where both cluster with nearby regions).

I vaguely remember there was a song translated into English as "Suicide on a Sunday Afternoon" that was Hungarian originally. Supposedly, suicide rates, not low by world standards to begin with, went up when it was played.

The ugric contribution to the hungarian gene pool is probably around 5%, so it is not likely due to deep common ancestry (the lack of such between finland and hungary is evident in recent studies where both cluster with nearby regions).

The suicide-stuff is more like a cultural thing, not a genetic. I have a hard time conjure that the suicides would continue if Finns as population would be adopted to to let say Russia.

I just paid a visit to the Swedish coastal town of Ekenäs at the Southern archipelago of Finland. The town is around 80% Swedish-speaking. I noticed that the few Finnish-speakers there were systematically whispering to each other in public. At first I thought it was an individual phenomenom, but it was persistent. The Finland-Swedes spoke in average, loud European voice, whereas the Finns were considerably quiet. I couldn't help thinking it as phenomenom which could be explained by the low self-condidence of Finns, and the fact that Swedish has a higher social prestige in the country.

My personal hyothesis is that Finns by character are closer to Inuits than they are to their adjacent Finland-Swedes. The low self-confidence behind the suicides is also peculiar to Inuits. The hypothesis is receiving some support by Oxford-graduated antropologist, Edward Dutton, who comes up with a new book in september, "the Finnuit".

"Expat life in Finlabd, artic exploration sheds light on Finland"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat...on- Finland.html

Only smart people are capable of suicide. Idiots always have strong sense of superioity.

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives...ves/ 003415.html

WHO data for 2005.
Male suicide rates per 100.000 in the neighboring Latvia, Lithuania (Germanic languages) and Estonia (Finno-Ugrian language) are 42, 68 and 35.5, respectively. The language hypothesis does not seem to work.

AG has a point.

(Disclaimer: I'm half Hungarian).

Latvia, Lithuania (Germanic languages)

they're baltic. not germanic.

Had a conversation with a few slovaks last night in limerick, ireland, they basically explained the hungarians were outsiders to the slavs even.
Maybe low self-esteem generated from the feeling of outsideness from individual countries could be a factor in suicide as it is in individuals as they feel increased stress from not being able to adapt to the general culture from the surrounding countries. Japan and Korea live in a kind of seige mentality aginst each other and china so this kinds of adds up.

(Disclaimer: I'm half Hungarian).

shouldn't you be saying magyar then?

stephenF, i'm skeptical of your model, but, i think one important fact to remember is that in east-central europe the magyars tended to serve as the ruling group over slavs. this was true during the early phase of the hungarian polity before ottoman conquest, but it became true after the expansion of the hapsburgh lands (ergo, the emergence of the dual monarchy in the 19th century). this is in contrast to the finns and baltic peoples, who were dominated for most of their recent history by other groups (swedes, germans, poles and russians).

I couldn't help thinking it as phenomenom which could be explained by the low self-condidence of Finns, and the fact that Swedish has a higher social prestige in the country.

Swedes are a 5 % minority who've been on welfare and affirmative action for decades. The social prestige has utterly flipped around by now, although they may not have realized it yet in some backwater town...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat...on- Finland.html

Thank God for British newspapers. If I hadn't read this, I would probably never would have even heard of all these customs and traditions that we have.

They did get one thing right though: the Swedes ARE like women. They talk and talk and talk and never do. Finns do.

Oh and I would bet that the suicide difference thing is simple the same as the overall violence difference. Finns don't just kill themselves at prodigous rates, we kill other people too.

Thank you for the correction, Razib.
Still, wasn’t the general point about non-Indo-European speakers?

Still, wasn’t the general point about non-Indo-European speakers?

yes. but i was joking, not serious.

jaakkeli, u really have issues with the swedes don't you? re: social prestige and swedish, my impression is that finnish speaking finns resent having to learn swedish since it's not really useful, and everyone uses english as a lingua franca anyway. it seems that using the analogy between ireland and britain works with finland and sweden, insofar as of late the colonized has leapfrogged on many developmental indices and world wide notice (though ireland has imploded thanks to the property bubble and bust). sweden has ericsson and the welfare state, and finland has nokia and the welfare state, but sweden is known for the welfare state and finland for nokia.

jaakkeli, u really have issues with the swedes don't you?

Barely passing high school and being stuck without a physics degree for years only because you're unable to pass Swedish courses does funny things to people.

re: social prestige and swedish, my impression is that finnish speaking finns resent having to learn swedish since it's not really useful, and everyone uses english as a lingua franca anyway.

And it was not obligatory in any way before it became useless and unprestigious. When Swedish was a prestigious language, there were of course plenty of students. Then after a while of despair the Swedes found multiculturalism and allies to force minority boosterism on everyone.

The generation for whom it was obligatory is only now entering power (the boomers didn't have it). So watch out for the news of "far right" victories...

BTW the Finnish welfare state never really got comparable with Sweden and it was further massively cut back in the 1990s (aka The Great Depression). Even the rest of it seems to be vanishing now. Eg. universal public health care is simply a myth: everyone I know to have tried lately has been turned away from there and simply told to go to private docs. Even on welfare Finland is rather different from Scandinavia.

(related to earlier points of discussion, though not to later points):

Yes, smarter countries have higher rates of suicide. But that doesnt mean that smarter people are more likely to kill themselves AS A GENERAL RULE (although the "rule" may exist in 21st century society). The intelligence-suicide connection may exist, but I suspect it exists for another reason. There is a strong perceived connection between intelligence and "success". Suicide is associated with lack of success, but ESPECIALLY when such lack of success is attributed to the behavioral/psychological issues. My suspicion is that intelligent-AND-"unsuccessful" people have (relatively) extremely high rates of suicide, primarly because a large PORTION of themselves are especially likely to target their failures to behavioral/psychological issues. This tends to result in abnormally high amounts of self-loathing (and/or) society-loathing feelings. Self-loathing (and/or) society-loathing feelings are (I suspect) HIGHLY associated with suicide. Dumber people are more likely to pinpoint their lack-of-success to non-psychological/behavioral issues, since there's a perceived NON-PSYCHOLOGICAL/BEHAVIORAL connection (or law) between intelligence and success. Such lack of success, as such, does NOT trigger such degrees of self-loathing or society-loathing feelings.

==

In any case, Native Americans have the highest rates of suicide, followed by Asians, then Whites, then Hispanics, then Blacks (if I can recall correctly). This is probably interesting since blacks tend to be the least "successful" group. But at least blacks probably have stronger inter-personal connections than Native Americans and (a large percent) of Asians. *Extreme* sociological phenomena, like suicide, must be analyzed in terms of extremes rather than averages (this is also true for genius/technological success and most mental illnesses). Not all phenomena fit a Gaussian distribution, and in phenomena NOT fitting a Gaussian distribution, end-point phenomena depend on MORE than merely mean and standard deviation. Asians may (ON AVERAGE) have stronger interpersonal connections than people of other groups, but I have reason to suspect that there is a significant percent of Asians (higher than the percent of other groups) that have especially weak interpersonal connections. This, in turn, may lead to especially high rates of suicide.

tvoh
I vaguely remember there was a song translated into English as "Suicide on a Sunday Afternoon"

That may have been one of the titles the cheerful little ditty went by.
Generally it is known as "Gloomy Sunday", music by composer Reszo Seress, Hungarian of course, set to a poem, Hungarian of course. Seress was feeling gloomy one Sunday in 1933, about a romanitic break-up. The legend grew that people committed suicide after hearing or playing the song, but the Great Depression was on and WWII was in the air. Many have covered the song, including Billie Holliday; but since this thread points north, here's a link to Bjork doing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T...h? v=TCEJtUNe90A

In Northern Ontario there's an old joke that the first they do in the spring is go through the woods and cut down all the Finns who've hanged themselves over the winter.