The fact is that the only certain thing of the recent epidemic of suicides is depression which is basic.
Two different research centres at Bristol University and at the American one in Illinois, showed that a lack of 5-hydrossitriptamina, a protein produced by a gene, may be found in people tending to commit suicide.
David Nutt, the head of Bristol team, when he was interviewed by The Sunday Telegraph, stated that many impulses can drive to suicide, but these impulses have a facilitated effect on the persons lacking in 5-hydrossitriptamina. According to Nutt it would be possible to produce a medicine checking the tendency to suicide by increasing the 5-HT(5-hidrossitriptamina).
A test on the so-called suicide gene is requested by insurance companies before underwriting life policies.
Another group of researchers of the Medical Research Council at Edimburgh University, prof. Tony Harman the chancellor, proved the link between depression and sert, an altered gene involved in the production of serotonin [1].
French and Swiss researchers get to similar results with a research published on the USA review “Molecular Psychiatry” and assert that, in conformity with the degree of mutation, predisposition to suicide may change from 1.72 to 3.63 times as to normal people( presenting such a mutation).
” If somebody has this genetic proneness, but nothing wrong happens to him, it is probable nothing may occur – David Bakish, coordinator of a research carried out by the Canadian University of Ottawa – but if something strong happens to this person like to lose his job or something else, it’s very probable for the mechanism(of suicide) to start up by itself”.
According this research, since an aspiring suicide’s thoughts can be quite different from the ones of another mentally ill person, the discovery might lead to the compilation of a “suicide test” in order to identify subjects at risk and try to prevent suicide.
The confirmation of the hereditary origin of depression is stated, as inevitable, by prof. Giovanni Battista Cassano of Pisa University. The same scholar, after denying that only the mutation of sert gene can explain so many troubles joined under the name of depression, asserts the want of serotonin, whose production is just linked to sert, is present in many psychopathologic conditions: anxiety, anorexia, bulimia, depression and suicide.
Also happiness depends on our genetic constitution. A greater or smaller activity of the left perifrontal area of the brain explains cheerful or sulky characters.
Whatever life events may be, a person “at high level of happiness” can recover his basic balance after pains and defeats.On the contrary the consolatory effect of joyful occasions lasts less in persons”at low level of happiness”[2].
If we accept the genetic origin of depression and the tendency to suicide we can, once again, hypothesize a mechanism at genetic feedback or negative retroaction: the more population increases, the more genetically inclined to depression and suicide people increase.
The increasing number of people of this kind takes place, above all, in those places and times where and when other regulation factors of population are made inactive by the level of civilization and sociopolitical situation.
In the countries where this doesn’t happen, regulation factors, like diseases( above all viral) and aggressiveness, first eliminate just depressed persons and with suicide tendencies.
In fact it’s evident a virus has more effect on an immunodepressed subject and, between the role of aggressor and the one of victim, it’s more probable for the second to be interpreted by a depressed person.
The number of suicides diminishes drastically in periods of epidemics and wars and vice versa, suicide epidemic concerns, particularly, countries where those who die of infective diseases and wars aren’t so frequent.
The more suicides increase, the more mass media carry news and by making use of those who are called” experts”, they try to explain every single case as it were an isolated one.
This way but, I stress, without any responsability, they encourage quite unintentionally suicide culture.
This culture, mysterious and irrational, can become a real myth[3], driving other people with similar tendences to imitate suicide behaviours.
The lack of responsability of media is due to the fact that, since they are the mirror of the times, they do but spread tendences, also genetic, present in the population.
[1] The importance of depression in the genesis of suicide is evident because of the increase of suicide cases in springtime, a season at high risk for depressed subjects to fall again. Alberto Oliviero, a psychobiologist, a professor at La Sapienza University, explains metabolism is more active in spring and since it requires a greater quantity of serotonin to mediate sensations and functions of the brain, a deficiency of this substance apprears more easily. Want of serotonin, increase of depression and suicide cases are typical of springtime.
[2] The piece of news is reported by the specialized review Psychological Science. The study was carried out by prof. Edward Diemer of Illinois University together with the genetist David Lykken of Minnesota University. Lykken, particularly, studied 1500 pairs of twins and could notice that in homozygous pairs, genetically identical, it’s enough to know the average level of welfare of one of the two subjects to know the other’s: even if the twins had different existential events, different careers, more or less happy marriages, different level of education, remain at the same rate of happiness.
[3] Mystery is necessary so that suicide culture becomes myth: a German tourist calls her mother from a hotel in Naples and reveals her she intends to commit suicide by jumping from the cliff of Tiberio’s ex-villa in Capri. Since that moment the German woman has disappeared and no trace of her will be found, neither in Naples nor in the spot chosen for her suicide.
Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci
To be continued in :
18°) Suicides(Le Mal de Vivre XVIII part)
19°) Suicides (Le Mal de vivre XIX part)
20°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XX part)
21°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XXI part)
See also:
1)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre First Part)
2)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Second part)
3)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Third Part)
4°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fourth Part)
5°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fifth part)
6°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Sixth part)
7°)Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Seventh part)
8°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Eighth Part)
9°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Ninth Part)
10°) Suicides (Le mal de Vivre Tenth Part)
11°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Eleventh Part)
12°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Twelfth Part)
13°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Thirteenth Part)
14°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Fourteenth Part)
15°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre XV part)
16°) Suicides (Le Mal de Vivre Sixteenth Part)
Ferdinando Gargiulo offers you a new perspective on why new viral epidemics, assaults, infanticides, suicide epidemics and even environmental catastrophes. Always engaged in his research decides to create a blog to offer his readers content of high value.