Greenland has the world’s highest suicide rate. And teen boys are at the highest risk.

 

Like native people all around the Arctic — and all over the world — Greenlanders were seeing the deadly effects of rapid modernization and unprecedented cultural interference. American Indians and Alaska Natives (many of whom share Inuit roots with Greenlanders) had already seen many of their communities buckle under the same pressures.

Source: www.npr.org

This is an incredibly tragic story; if I could add one word to the sub-title, it would read, “It’s not JUST the dark the kills you.”  I’m not an environmental determinist, but we can’t pretend that the climate/darkness don’t play some role in Greenland having 6x the suicide rates of the United States.  See also this article/photo gallery about a similar suicide problem in the indigenous far north of Canada.    

 

Tags: Greenland, Arctic, gender, podcast, indigenous.

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