Variations of suicide within Australia.

Abstract

The image of Australia purveyed overseas is of a sun-drenched land of opportunity. However this paper will consider the darker side of this free enterprise society and, in particular, those who for reason of social failure or despair are driven to take their own lives. Public concern in Australia, as elsewhere in the Western world, has been increasingly focused upon the toll of unnecessary death which seems to accompany the stresses of a “modern” way of life; alcohol-related mortality, road accident deaths and suicide. In relation to suicide in Australia, Hetzel [1] has stressed that the purpose of epidemiological study is to aid understanding the problem with the object of manipulating culpable factors in order to ameliorate the general human condition. Against this broad aim suicide occurrence in Australia is analysed at, first, the national and zonal scale (statistical divisions); second, the municipal (local government area) scale for selected country districts and third, the L.G.A. scale within metropolitan Sydney, i.e. the intra-urban scale.