From respect to rights to entitlement, blocked aspirations and suicidal behavior

Dr. Bill Richards was a noted psychiatrist who worked with Alaska Native people for many years. This paper was taken from notes he used for a slide presentation at a conference. In it, he discussed the possible relationship between rapid social change and the increasing rates of suicide among northern people. He summarized the limitations in the existing suicide data, including its essentially descriptive nature, the short time periods of study, small numbers of observations and lack of complete health service use information which could help anticipate a suicidal event. Richards noted the importance of suicide as an indicator condition that could be used to link social survey and health information data bases. He closed his paper with a discussion of the transition from an era of "rights" to one of "entitlements," and described his observations of growing overt anger and hostile dependency upon government programs. Last, Richards related his concerns over the collection of health service use and epidemiological data associated with a suicidal event.