New Zealand's Māori are famed the world over for their warrior culture. But in a country with the highest teen suicide rate in the developed world, why are Maori boys barely holding on?
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Māori kids, barely holding on
New Zealand's Māori are famed the world over for their warrior culture. But in a country with the highest teen suicide rate in the developed world, why are Maori boys barely holding on?
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(Old Spike)
Suicide rates among indigenous youth are around 3X higher in Canada but the govt doesn't collect proper stats.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/10/analysis/canadas-indigenous-suicide-crisis-worse-we-thought
https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/suicide-facts-2015-data
(Short Spike)
In NZ, under-identification of Māori population counts and deaths led to under-estimation of mortality and over-estimation of LE (life expectancy) during 1980–1999 [7, 8, 21, 22]. The New Zealand Census-Mortality Study (NZCMS) enhanced ethnic identification through data linkage between death registrations and census records resulting in more realistic (and higher) mortality rates for Māori up to 1996
https://pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12963-017-0140-6
(Short Spike)
From sources I know personally that work in the field of First Nations suicide prevention, Canada is likely twice that of NZ - 24.3 deaths per 100,000 for Canada and 13.93 deaths per 100,000 in NZ as of 2017. Also, those First Nations people living off the reserves are about half as likely to commit suicide. Not stats to be proud of for either country. This does not include Inuit or Metis stats. The one stat that gives us hope is that 60% of First Nations bands had a zero suicide rate.
I have had First Nation friends who committed suicide growing up - and a few that became heads of their bands. It's a very very complicated issue which will take a very long time to resolve.
(Old Spike)
even when kids are killing themselves. its a competition to him. he's also giving old nz stats. between 2016-2019 it got up to 32 per 100k
(Old Spike)
That figure is for for Maori males, not youth.