November 2019 will take its place in history as the month when a series of events previously unseen in Turkey were recorded: Collective Family Suicides. Within just 10 days, 11 people from 3 families in Fatih, Antalya, and Bakirkoy lost their lives due to cyanide poisoning.
The fact that there were 3 small children among them and that their death decisions were made by their fathers is important for understanding the dimensions of the tragedy.
The Psychology of Suicide
So what is this "suicide" and "why does a person commit suicide?". Suicide is a highly controversial act in terms of both its definition and scope. Although it was initially accepted that the termination of one's life must be carried out with consciousness, this scope was later expanded to include systematic neglect or actions known to result in death.
However, the more striking debate than the scope has developed over the causes. The first definition (Freud), which addressed the person directing their aggression and anger towards themselves, was expanded as a desire to punish someone else or make peace with them, an expression of escape from unmanageable difficulties (Schilder). However, this conceptualization was later expanded to evolve into the person committing suicide actually wanting to kill someone else (Bernfeld). According to this, it was said that the person experienced a strong identification with the other person they wanted to kill, but aimed to eliminate this person they later hated with their own death.
Accepting that all of these conceptualizations are correct or all wrong will not change the result much. In reality, what the purpose of the person committing suicide is will remain a mystery. However, examining the cause-effect relationship of actions repeated in a similar way in the same ecosystem will give us an idea about the environmental factors that push him and others to behave in the same way, if not about the inner world of the person committing suicide.
Fight, Flight, Ask for Help
Human psychology has developed various defense mechanisms to cope with the difficulties encountered. The most primitive and automatic of these is the trio we can define as "Fight, Flight, Ask for Help". Thousands of years of human evolution have delegated the "Flight" function to the Amygdala, which is responsible for involuntary reactions of the brain, in order not to allow any delay for struggling with difficulties. In cases where escape is not possible, the "Fight" command has written heroic stories. The last option, "Ask for help", is actually the collective mind search of the human who realizes that he cannot get out of the war alive with his own means. The human who is sure that he will not get results with this trio begins to evaluate his existence in the world.
The last 5 years can be called a real disaster period for the country we live in. To make a very rough summary, 4,000 people died due to various acts of violence such as Reina, Ataturk Airport, Ankara Train Station attacks in this period. 10 elections, 5 major military operations were held. Train, mine accidents, negligence causing child deaths, climate anomalies, various rights violations, unlawfulness, even 1 coup attempt were seen. Social polarization was escalated due to political conflicts. The dollar increased by 100%. While the unemployment rate saw 14%, youth unemployment rates reached a historical peak with 27.4%.
One does not need to be very ambitious to say that this picture caused a deep trauma in all segments of society. In this period of great difficulties, everyone applied to the trio system we explained above in one way or another;
First, different segments showed the "Flight" reaction in their own way. Some simply chose to close their eyes; they assumed that if they closed their eyes and their television, they could protect themselves from these problems that are extremely difficult to cope with. In just the last 1 year, 250 thousand well-educated people found the remedy in packing up and leaving the country.
However, of course, it was not possible to escape from the traumas faced. That's exactly where "Fight" came into play. The system first acted very willingly to carry water to the mill of war. The front opened against terror, the front opened against the dollar, the front opened against the coup fed the war reflex of both its supporters and opponents. In order to prevent a possible misunderstanding, it is necessary to explain that the concept of war here is actually entering into a counter-struggle with the difficulty faced. In this context, it should be said that it is extremely natural for a person to find himself fighting with things that have nothing to do with the difficulty he is in as a result of misdirection from time to time.
Burning financial difficulties stood out as the most basic component of everyone's daily individual struggle. Some did not object to bullying, mobbing, low raises, extending working hours at work in order to keep their financial situation stable. Some compromised their own self in order to benefit from various aids, acted like someone they were not, said things they did not want, supported views they did not like. But the war everyone fought in their own way did not work either. Things continued to get worse every day.
Social Cry for Help
A social "Help" cry reached levels that could almost be heard with ears. Along with economic troubles, aid taps were turned off. Debts became unpostponable. The government, which was deified thinking that it would rush to help in any condition, started to wag its finger at its supporters after its opponents. It took its first major defeats. Being the only authority for the solution has a problem like being responsible for hopelessness when solutions are exhausted. Exactly at this point, the collective mind search that should have come into play; since the opposition was suppressed with violence and the streets were closed to people's rebellions, it was disabled with a great siege, so it could not rush to help.
The result caused perhaps the biggest wound to be healed, namely the loss of hope. The person who lost hope in tomorrow, in his children, in the healing power of time, turned to solving the meaninglessness in his life by ending it. He saw it as his right to take away not only his own life rights but also the life rights of his family, even his children, for whom he could not be a hope with his existence. But perhaps, as in the discussion on the causes of suicide, while ending his own life, he was trying to kill someone else whom he once identified with himself and loved very much but whom he saw as responsible for his troubles today and hated. Maybe he was screaming a huge cry for help. While escaping from the difficulties he could no longer cope with, he was pointing to the responsible and waiting for others to answer this last cry for help.
