The ‘discovery’ of suicide in Africa

AUTHOR: Megan Vaughan is Professor of African History and Health at UCL. Her work has focused on the history of medicine and psychiatry in Africa, on the history of famine, food supply and gender relations. She is currently working on a Wellcome Trust-funded history of epidemiological change in Africa, focusing on ‘chronic’ diseases.

Suicide is a global phenomenon and there is a large scholarship comparing suicide rates and meanings in different cultures and time periods. Prominent in this literature have been the ideas of the nineteenth century sociologist, Emile Durkheim, who argued that suicide increased with industrialisation and urbanisation as individuals experienced a sense of alienation and social isolation. From his Parisian sample he found, amongst other things, that suicide rates were higher amongst men than women, that the more educated were more likely to take their own lives and that Protestants were more prone to suicide than Catholics. Though Durkheim’s ideas have been widely critiqued, the general idea that suicide is the result of a breakdown of social bonds is still very influential.

Amongst the many issues facing anyone studying suicide or its history is the question of evidence. In most societies most forms of suicide are subject to taboo. It is an act that provokes fear and shame and is the subject of religious sanction. Unsurprisingly, then, suicide is often underreported and statistics unreliable. Some scholars ask a more far-reaching question: given the very different forms that suicide can take, is it a meaningful category of analysis at all?

Historically African societies have often been viewed as having low rates of suicide. More recently, it is argued, rates have increased markedly. Across Eastern and Southern Africa since around 2000 this alleged increase has attracted the attention of professional bodies, and has also been the subject heightened concern in the local press. Some of the latter has the character of a ‘moral panic’ – every dramatic suicide is reported as if it represents a collapse of the moral and religious order and the disintegration of society itself. Psychiatry professionals across the region are now paying more attention to depressive illness and suicide, and awareness of the need for suicide prevention is increasing. In the process, suicide is being to some degree ‘medicalised’.

It is hard if not impossible to get to the bottom of this recent phenomenon, but it is important to remember that for most of Africa we have no baseline data from which to measure any increase. The assumption that ‘traditional’ Africans had low rates of suicide is not based on statistics, and there is a strong element of colonial racist thinking involved here. Colonial psychologists and commentators generally argued that Africans were simple ‘happy-go-lucky’ people with no cares in the world and, crucially, that they did not have a strong enough sense of individual responsibility to feel the kind of guilt that is often a precursor to suicide. Rates of depressive illness were assumed to be low; suicide was assumed to be very rare. It seems likely, given what we know about the pressures on many societies in present-day Africa, that suicide rates are indeed rising, but it is important to remember how flimsy our evidence is.

In one study of inquest reports dating from the 1940s in Nyasaland (now Malawi), I tried get a picture of the kinds of circumstances that drove people to take their lives. The stories told by these (admittedly problematic) documents were varied, often very moving, sometimes very familiar, sometimes surprising. Men committed suicide more often than women. Family tensions featured centrally, as they do all over the world. Living in a small rural village does not lessen the impact of these tensions, but may well enhance them. Cases of marital infidelity and disappointment in love occurred alongside the tragedies of a society in which mortality rates were high. Women who had lost babies in childbirth or infancy sometimes killed themselves out of grief or guilt – the latter not infrequently provoked by accusations of witchcraft. There were murder-suicides – angry and frustrated men killed or injured their wives in fits of rage, then killed themselves. Elderly and disabled people, apparently feeling that they were a burden on their families, ended their lives. The shame of extreme poverty drove some to suicidal despair. Long-term illness and chronic pain also featured in this bundle of archival documents – years of toothache in one or two cases.

The religious or supernatural dimension of suicide also emerged clearly. Some people were said to have been impelled to take their lives by a supernatural force. At the same time, the spirits of those who had committed suicide were widely feared. Though there might be some sympathy for the suicidal, in general suicide was seen as a ‘bad’ death and an offence to the ancestors. The spirits of suicides, restless, angry and sad, haunted those left behind.

In a society with low literacy rates, these stories were mostly pieced together from the accounts of surviving family members and neighbours, but occasionally, amongst this late colonial legal documentation, there was a suicide note. Anyone who has experienced a close suicide will know that the shock of discovery never really goes away. Finding these small surviving pieces of paper provokes the same feeling and is a reminder of the unique nature of each one of these human tragedies.