Better Education Systems Render Higher Suicide Rates Amongst Teens

/ erinyoder

Teenage suicide has been an ongoing issue for years. Some researchers say that this is a a result of depression and anxiety or other stresses that life produces. One of these stresses that is found to be in direct correlation with suicide is the stress of school work.

Some of the top leaders in education are South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, and Estonia. Each of these countries have scored above average on the PISA, an organization that tests students of 15 years old in different subjects, tests in math, science, and reading as shown in the interactive map below.

//www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/?lg=en

However, these good scores do not come without a price. Many of the countries that score above average require their students to do hours of homework.

Although Japan and South Korea do night assign as much homework as New Zealand or Estonia, in many cases, students attend cram school where much of their homework gets done. Students will spend  three hours or more at cram school after their regular school day, which greatly reduces the amount of homework actually done at home.

As can be seen each of these countries puts an enormous amount of stress on their students to perform well in school and this is reflected in the suicide rates for each country.

Countries with leading education systems in the world have shown to have higher suicide rates, with those ranging from ages 15 to 19 years old contributing the most to the number of suicides.

South Korea holds the number one spot in both the country with the best education system and the country with the most suicides. Closely following behind it are Japan New Zealand, and Estonia. According to a study done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2012, these countries also have some of the most suicides in the world as seen in the chart below.

https://data.oecd.org/chart/4O0a

Although China is not listed, a study done by the Chinese CDC stated that 22.23 people per 100,000 committed suicide in 2010.

Of the suicides in the mentioned countries above, a considerable amount were teenage suicides:

If this data is put together comparatively it looks like this:

 

Teenage suicide accounts for almost a 5th of the total suicide attempts in each country. The amount of suicides in these countries is significantly higher than many other developed countries with good education systems. However, to be part of the best education systems in the world, the school systems in South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, and Estonia put a great deal of pressure on their students to do well. This results in higher suicide rates among teenagers in those countries where it is expected that they do well in school.

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