The myth of “Swedish suicide”
Via the Edinburgh University Library on Scandinavia: Swedish suicide rates:
A table of Suicide rates compiled by the World Health Organisation, Geneva, 2003, shows that while other Nordic and Baltic countries do show high rates of male suicide (e.g Lithuania, Estonia and Finland), Sweden does not exhibit an unusually high rate. Indeed France, New Zealand, Australia and Germany each show higher rates than Sweden. The Swedish rate is slightly higher than Canada and the USA perhaps but not the highest in the world. The myth of Swedish suicide” has its roots in the late-1950s when the American President Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to it in a speech which had been based on an inaccurate briefing. The President had tried to paint a negative picture of Sweden, a nation which - with its cradle-to-grave socialism - had set itself on a post-war neutral stance outside the then embryonic-NATO and American influence. Ever since many people have accepted the picture as fact and perpetuate the myth.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:54 am
[…] First Impressions of Stockholm First impression was of course the weather, which was damp and cold, and the darkess, in December it gets dark at 3.00 pm. I’ve heard that there’s a high suicide rate in Sweden because they don’t get enough light, however, a bit of googling shows this to be a myth. […]
June 17th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Sweden is the most boring country in the world. Don’t go there! You will kill yourself