Editorial
Alienation and anomie: Youth suicide, the media and Hansonism
Nicholas G Procter
Professor, Chair of Mental Health Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Division of Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide SA
Eileen Willis
Department of Palliative and Supportive Services, School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide SA
PP: 107
Article Text
Everyday, when we turn on the television or open a newspaper, we are confronted by text and images that reflect a rapidly changing world. We read and see stories of people who are alienated by a variety of social, political and emotional forces. In the former East Germany, three-million out of nine-million jobs have been loss since re-unification in October 1990. One out of five workers is unemployed, provoking such high levels of alienation among groups that approximately one-third of Eastern Germans between the ages of 15 and 25 now positively identify with neo-nazi ideology and other forms of right-wing xenophobia (Drozdial, 1998). At the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in August 1998, it was reported by Stanford University sociologists Eric Rice and David Grunsky that Americans between 18 and 29 years of age are more disaffected, disconnected and angst ridden than previous generations of younger adults. Many are cynical about institutions, bleak about the future and generally dissatisfied with their own lives (Morin, 1998). Grunsky and Rice based their claims on an analysis of data collected annually since the early 1970s in the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago.
Closer to home, in the wake of the Asian economic crisis a clear link has emerged between the rising number of suicides and bankruptcies. For example, Japan's National Police Agency estimate that around 3600 people killed themselves because of economic problems during 1997 (Sugawara, 1998).
Yet, seldom are the forces of shifting social conditions on a global scale brought together as a reference point for discussing recent frustrations being felt by people living in Australia. Consider the impact of Pauline Hanson's nationalist socialism on people of Asian appearance in Australia. Since her maiden speech in September 1996 and the launch of the One Nation Party in the first half of 1997, her rhetoric has come to prominence with a simultaneous, steady accumulation of mistrust felt among Asian people and reports of taunts, threats and even violence against them. The endless petty indignities and personal slights have grown into something more menacing across the nation: we are witness to divisive rhetoric and simplistic reactions to the social and economic impact of globalisation, and to perceived feelings of political and personal powerlessness.
Could this be alienation and anomie on a grand scale? Might Hansonism, with its ironic contradictions, be a misguided act of protest against the very retreat of the 'Welfare State' that this new political party argues privileges Aboriginal people, Asians, adolescent mothers and other young people on welfare benefits over its own supporters? Might it be that the supporters' discontent is the same as that of other groups' in our society, but in their rage and shared class jealousy, they have lashed out at those people similarly burnt by policies of economic rationalism-policies that follow the logic of market forces rather than protect human welfare? If so, here is false class consciousness of a grand scale!
Nowhere are these contradictions more obvious than in the case of Australia's young people. Their protests against One Nation's racism were loud and clear at the recent rallies held across the country. The media reports were sympathetic and supportive. However, the media did little to explain why there is a shared sense of betrayal felt by One Nation supporters, Asian Australians and the nation's young people; instead, most reports continue to divide and polarise such groups, not understanding that their disaffection might have common origin. As Phillip Adams (1996:54) reminds us, news media is being loaded with emotive value judgements manufactured to entertain:
'[The media] is driven by visuals ... by simplifications that have to be instantly comprehensible. Forget the subtext, complexities and shades of grey ... you will find them, if you're lucky, in print.'
Consider the contradictions created for young people by health, welfare, labour market and education policies and their impact on youth suicide. In a recent article, Sharon Wright, a highly respected senior mental health nurse in charge of Out of the Blues, an innovative unit at the Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia which is dedicated to working with young people suffering from acute depression and suicide ideation, said the 'age of individualism' stops young people reaching out for help (Sunday Mail 16 August 1998:19). The article went on to identify strong links between sexual abuse and suicide and to note in passing that many young people are referred to the unit by their employment officers. This newspaper article was the third in a series on youth suicide and was mainly an account of the medical profession's response to youth suicide, including a suggestion that in many situations, general practitioners do not respond adequately to young people's distress. The article discusses the inadequate funding for the unit and of its excellent work. No doubt readers are also left with the view that adequate funding for units such Out of the Blue and adequate training of GPs will go a long way to overcoming the problems of youth suicide and acute depression.
The innovative and highly professional work of nurses such as Sharon Wright and psychiatrist Professor Graham Martin should be supported in full; however, their heroic efforts blur the underlying causes of youth suicide, leaving the impression that such a problem is one for medicine and teams of talented nurses to address. Here, the idea that youth suicide is a social problem requiring political and social solutions is cleverly 'medicalised' in Adelaide's popular Sunday tabloid. The newspaper report's emphasis on the biomedical frame of reference for problem solving gives rise to 'exclusionary closure achieved by a [medical] profession that has gone from strength to strength this century' (Saks, 1998:175). Sharon Wright's comment that young people do not reach out for help because of a culture of individualism subtly leaves the problem of Generation X to be dealt with by teams of innovative health professionals. However, no connections are made between the rise of youth suicide and depression and, for example: the current economic crisis; the last decade of youth-related policies in welfare, education and the labour market sectors that have seen the establishment of the Youth Allowance and work-for-the-dole schemes; and the possible failure of the governments' privatisation of employment agencies causing high rates of youth unemployment across all strata of young people. No connection is made between youth suicide and the current federal government's own figures acknowledging that 40 per cent of the country's 2.7 million 15 to 20 year-olds are unemployed, or that they constitute 27 per cent of the long-term unemployed (Community, 1998:5).
The absence of such connections I a damning indictment of stereotypical reporting done from privileged positions about a serious health problem. The newspaper article neglects cultural and social conceptions of 'personhood', because these elements inevitably interact with organisational and structural change in local situations (Cahill, 1998). From a media so powerful, its social function so profound, it has been called the 'consciousness industry' (Cunningham and Turner, 1993:5), because what it sells are limited ways of thinking, of seeing, and of talking about the world. It is now common knowledge that Australia has one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the world and yet, interestingly, the problem continues to be explained generally in terms of individual depression. We are told these young people are depressed, sexually abused, on drugs or homeless. Yet, we also know that between 1982 and 1992, the rate of suicide has increased from 19 to 27 per 100,000 (The Health of Young Australians, 1995:21).
Surely the media should ask: Why do Australian young people suffer depression that leads them to a higher rate of suicide than of their peers in the United States of America, Canada or Germany? The fact that it is employment officers who alert health professionals when they come into contact with depressed youth demonstrates the alienation and anomie caused by the contradiction of welfare and youth policy in Australia, because it is in the area of employment that the full gamut of the contradictions can be found. The unemployed sector includes young Aboriginal people, young men in rural areas, young mothers, young Asian refugees and migrants-people who, while disparate, are ironically part of the same socio-economic group as many of One Nation's supporters.
Policy shifts for young people since the economic downturn of the late 1970s and early 1980s has seen discourse shift from that of 'the dole bludger', where the assumption was that many young people lived off the fat of the taxpayer, to the present discourse, where the false message, shared by One Nation, is that all that is required to succeed is hard work and effort. The focus of education curriculum has changed since the 1970s from an interest in equity for citizenship to a focus on skills acquisition. The major rationale for schooling in the 1990s is the national interest. Equity has been reduced to equity in the job market (Kennedy, 1994), and the National Health Plan for Young Australians refers to them as 'consumers ' (National Health Plan for Young Australians, 1996). While the national interest cannot be neglected and, indeed, a healthy national economy provides opportunity for equity, the policy outcomes run counter to other cultural values important to Generation X: that of choice, independence and tolerance. These contradictions broadcast anomie: a societal crisis condition where confusion abounds about social justice and social rewards (Sargent, Nilan and Winter, 1997:174).
Young people under 18 who leave school before Year 12 will not be eligible for the current government's Youth Allowance and, those who do not run up to job interviews, who do not take up jobs offered or miss an appointment with Centrelink staff will have their payments cut by 18 per cent, 24 per cent and 100 per cent respectively (The Guide, 1998:13). While many older citizens could argue that this seems reasonable, in the current de-regulated labour market, young people are vulnerable to exploitation. Recent reports by Yossi Beger indicate that up to 3000 Australians died in industrial accidents in Australia in 1997 ('Lateline' 6 August, 1998), and research on violence in the workplace indicates that young men in apprenticeships are the most at risk ('ABC News' 1998). At the same time, expenditure on job-training programs, placing Australia well below other Western nations such as Canada and Germany, with healthier statistics for youth unemployment (Sargent, Nilan and Winter, 1997:171). These statistics indicate alienation, where the so-called rewards of work deny people choice, creativity and enjoyment (Sargent et. al. 1997:174).
The 1989 Burdekin Report on homeless youth established links between sexual abuse and family violence. Welfare policies linked to the new Youth Allowance now means-test benefits up to a combined parental income of $40,000, and disallow payment for those who have not completed Year 12, thereby challenging young people's sense of independence. But, the facts are that many young people are now in the education system as well as being in the low-paid , insecure, low-skilled jobs of the secondary labour market. They are the new working poor. The fact that we do not see these working poor on the streets is simply because their wages are supplemented by their parents. The price they pay is their independence. These facts are reported in isolation in the media, shown rarely as a cohesive set of factors creating holes in the fabric of our society. Instead, Hansonism is portrayed by most media as an over-reaction to political correctness rather than as a cruel and misguided protest against economic rationalism and the consequent individualising and medicalising of social problems and public issues. In Hansonism, the victims of economic rationalism become the victims of One Nation.
As nurses, we see such people in causality departments and community clinics, where there is an opportunity for the profession to work towards restoring trust and a sense of belonging in the face of economic contradictions and Hansonism's misplaced vociferous racial and ageist developments. We must ask: What our own feelings are towards young people, whose who are suicidal, unemployed, refugees or migrants? Do we fear or dislike them, and if so, why? Are we ambivalent towards those who are less fortunate than ourselves? How are our experiences, ideas, thoughts and feeling about others manifested during clinical practice? How are our views shaped by media and popular opinion, and through what means is this made practical? The dispossessed are not a romantic mass, but real people who are identified by various differences. The tough side of nursing and other public service professionals and occupations is that we deal with these people at the very point of their distress. This is indeed hard work of a political and personal nature.
By working through our personal and subjective responses to clinical situations involving people with whom we feel uncomfortable, we have an opportunity to move our practice forward. Being critically aware of our prejudices and biases helps us to understand the direction of what is suggested or inferred by them, and affect the way we relate to others. With an enhanced and deeper awareness of background social, economic and racial issues, we can make sensitive revisions of our understanding. We can be more open to the complex ways that social, political and emotional issues are at play in the wider world, and how such understandings inevitably influence nursing practice. Our understandings define not only the discourse we use, but also our literal position in relation to the people we care for-both present and future.
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