Don’t be too quick to blame school pressure for Hong Kong’s youth suicides

Paul Stapleton says while saddening, the recent spike in cases involving Hong Kong youth may in fact be a statistically random event, rather than part of any meaningful pattern

Reading Time:3 minutes

Hong Kong secondary school students congratulate each other after collecting their exam results. School pressure isn’t the most cited reason for student suicides, according to one study. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 1:59pm, 22 Mar 2016Updated: 8:48am, 28 Sep 2016

Hong Kong is presently experiencing some soul-searching following the recent spate of youth suicides. The media is full of discussions about the plight of our youth, providing reasons for these tragedies and lamenting the inadequate support that students appear to be getting. Pressure from the education system is often at the top of the list of reasons for the loss of life.

But other causes have been suggested, ranging from the clinical (a lack of counsellors in the city) to the cultural (the pressures of living in a highly competitive society).

No shortage of solutions have been proposed: make the school system less exam-oriented; provide courses in positive thinking to create healthier mindsets; increase the number of counsellors; identify and intervene early with those at risk of suicide; establish pledges not to commit suicide, and so on. As well meaning as these ways of tackling the problem are, realistically, we realise there are no quick and easy solutions.

Education chief gets earful over HK$5,000 payout per school to fight student suicides

Hong Kong is experiencing some soul-searching following the recent spate of suicides. The sudden spike may simply be a result of the clustering illusion, perhaps with copycat actions only adding to the tragedy. Photo: AFP

Yet, looking at the recent tragedies from a completely different perspective, another story can be told. And while this story cannot provide any deep-rooted causal explanations or solutions, it can help us better understand how and why events happen in certain patterns.

I speak of the clustering illusion or, in plain language, how events can appear to occur in meaningful patterns or streaks, when in fact they are part of a naturally occurring random sequence. In other words, all of our soul-searching to find causes and solutions to these recent tragedies may be looking in the wrong direction.

Of course, attributing deeper causal meaning to seven suicides in nine days is completely understandable because it is so exceptional, especially when those suicides are among our precious youth. However, a closer look at suicide statistics and associated research studies paints a picture that is more complex than surface appearances would lead us to believe.

Blame game on student suicides misses the point: it’s elitism that piles on the pressure

So many student suicides in just a few days is clearly shocking. The 22 suicides that have occurred since the school year began in September is roughly double the rate normally experienced over the same period in previous years among students.