it is frustrating to hear people ask those thinking about taking their own lives to take sole responsibility for it by 'reaching out'. Nor is it a friends and family burden. Let's look at the core of this issue: the countries that have the longest average working hours have a very high suicide rate. The idea that working long unsociable hours away from friends and family is demonstrating admirable passion should be completely dismantled

also companies exploit our virtuous ideas of 'working hard' for our families and it is completely toxic and isolates us from each other. we should be able to be released from this enslavement to have time to be fully human, not forced to adhere to answering emails at 2am or doing 3 jobs a day for next to nothing

I'm not pretending to know the magic bullet but I do think there is a link between work culture and mental health. I lived in Japan for two years and it happened in *high schools* because kids had one hour to themselves a day before bedtime and doing it all over again

@caraellison Bullying is also rampant in Japanese high schools. You get bullied for any sort of nonconformity and the teachers just look the other way, if not encourage it.

@freakazoid I think there is definitely a 'the nail that sticks up gets hammered down' stuff mixing into it, but it's the pressure cooker that really makes it seem like you are an adult in a corporate workhouse before you're even 13 years old. I taught eight year olds who became completely different people after entering the pressures of high school

@caraellison The combination of "things are shitty now' and "I have nothing but constant work to look forward to" seems like a perfect storm.

I wonder if the Japanese suicide rate is high enough that it's affected their genome to increase the fraction of people able to tolerate such an environment?