Five Historical Facts About Suicide

1. In Japanese culture the act of harakiri, ritual disembowelment, has stood for centuries as a way for shamed warriors to attempt to restore some honour.
2. Cicero Minor reported to the Roman Senate that Mark Antony had committed suicide after the fall of Egypt and Cleopatra, Antony’s titles and honours were revoked, his statues removed, and it was decreed that no member of the Antony family would ever again take the name Marcus.
3. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Julliet, the titular characters’ suicides at the end of the play demonstrates that without their loves, they feel that only the most serious response is possible.
4. Many modern-day laws against suicide stem from historic beliefs around the nature of suicide, with many religious doctrines maintaining the belief that it is up to God, and God alone, to decide our lives, and that suicide denies this. In German, the word for suicide is selbstmord, literally “self-murder”, because of the weight of the taboo. This culture has created an atmosphere where we struggle daily to talk about our mental health, and to ask for help when we struggle with suicidal thoughts.
5. Suicide in young gay men was the driving influence in Magnus Hirschfeld, physician and founder of the Institute of Sexual Research in interwar Germany, to advocate for LGBT+ rights. When treating a young officer for depression, the officer revealed a great shame over his attraction to other men, and ultimately ended his life as he couldn’t live with the guilt. This moment would drive Hirschfeld to struggle for LGBT+ rights, which included an unsuccessfully attempting to repeal Germany’s ban on homosexuality.

A bust of Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), from the Vatican Museums