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Jobs and Tradition May Curb Rural Suicide Rate

Alaska Division of Vital Statistics

A study published by the American Journal of Public Health reports that Alaskan natives are four times more likely to commit suicide than those in the lower 48.  The study says alcohol bans don’t reduce suicides in rural Alaska, but bringing jobs to those villages might.    

The study compared 46,000 Alaskan Natives in rural villages with varying alcohol control laws.  It also looked at the influence traditional elders had on the communities. The study showed young men, ages 15 to 34, made up 66% of the suicide deaths between 1980 and 1987. 

Professor of economics at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage Matthew Berman wrote the report.  He says his studied proved that rural communities that outlawed alcohol had higher suicide rates.  

“It doesn’t mean alcohol control causes suicide it means that communities that have high suicide rates are more likely to try to control alcohol and maybe that would be because they are concerned about suicide and they are trying to do something about it. That would be one tool.”

Berman says the villages he studied with higher household incomes and marriage rates had lower suicide rates.  However, he says language plays a huge part.

“Suicide rates are higher in communities where there are households who don’t speak anything but English living alongside where nobody speaks English well. You have a communication barrier there. And communities that look similar but everybody in the community can speak a native language as well as English the presence of households who could not speak English well was actually beneficial.”

Professor of anthropology at Kenai Peninsula College Alan Boraas agrees. He has visited rural native villages in Bristol Bay, and says the forced assimilation of Alaskan Natives is what causes the suicide rates to be so high.   Those communities that continue to embrace some aspect of their heritage are have a lower suicide rate. 

“It has to do with meaningful multigenerational work. Families working together, usually extended families, practicing something that their ancestors have practiced. Eating foods, particularly salmon, that are highly nutritious, that Yup’ik people at least may have been adapted to that prevent certain disease. And practicing those spiritual practices that have gone for a very long time and that gives meaning to life. And meaning in life curbs suicide.”

Boraas says the belief among those in the lower 48 that the suicide and depression rates in Alaska are so high because of the isolation and winter darkness is a misconception. 

“Those of us who have come to Alaska from mid-latitudes who have brought with them that dark and cold are a metaphor for evil. Which is a common metaphor but it’s not in the north. In the north, a common metaphor of evil for example is a crazed brown bear.”

Jobs aren’t the total answer to lowering the suicide rate, Boraas says.  Although now having income is necessary for a subsistence based life style, he says it all boils down to embracing the ancient heritage that the communities were founded on.  Berman agrees that jobs are just part of the answer.

“My study did go beyond jobs and also looked at some other social and cultural factors that are associated with lower or higher suicide rates. A couple of things stood out as being quiet important and possibly more important than jobs. It could also be related to sort of sustainable life styles.”

Alaska has the nation’s highest suicide rate, and the majority of those suicides occur in the rural villages.  Although there isn’t a consensus on how to curb these numbers, it is clear that a combination of ancestral traditions and economic growth may be the answer.