Are generational factors affecting middle-age suicides?

Generational factors may also play a role in the changing suicide patterns. Speaking of generational cohorts is, of course, always fraught with risks. There is the chance that one will generalise too easily, for example, bracketing together people of very different socio-economic backgrounds and experiences.

However, there is often a benefit in applying generational shifts or trends to social problems like suicide. For one, it provides a general overview of influences on the thinking of a people-group during a period of great change.

The eldest of the Millennial generation will now be in their early 30s, so they fit at the very low end of the group cited by the Samaritans.

Millennials, generically speaking, have been raised during relatively stable and, until recently, largely prosperous times. Their parents have invested heavily in studying how to actualise their children's potential and in providing extra-curricula projects to develop their gifts. The dominant message they've have received growing up is one of affirmation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Millennials often appear in studies to be more optimistic about the future than their forebears. This may also be why levels of suicide among younger adults have dropped compared to those aged 34 and above.

Most of the group represented by the latest suicide figures may be counted among Generation X. This very resourceful cohort received perhaps the lowest level of childhood nurturing of all the great generations of our time.

They arrived on the scene as their parents were still busy dealing with the do-your-own-thing, hyper-individualism of the 60s and early 70s, or the greed-is-good ideals of the late 70s and 80s. Their arrival wasn't met with any huge new toy industries or book series written just for children.

Generation X featured heavily in my early work in Australia, as the leader of a national network of youth organisations throughout the 1980s. Studies revealed that, by the end of that decade, youth suicide in our country was at its highest rate on record. This coincided with the teenage years of GenXers.

In the late 80s, I also toured the UK several times, speaking to audiences of mainly young people. I found that because of rising globalisation, British young people struggled with many of the same issues as those in my homeland and a number of European nations were battling with the same youth suicide problem.

An academic study needs to be done on how generational characteristics in youth might impact upon adult behaviour in middle-age. There are, I think, factors here that may help us better understand the plight of those people, men in particular, who now believe there is no hope for a brighter tomorrow.