From Mad in Norway: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, writes Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of his novel Anna Karenina. What can these words tell us about our singular ability and our uncanny but unique potential to give ourselves a death sentence? Is it self-destructive something that we become obsessed with? Is there an underlying psychopathology, a faceless and destructive force that forces us, so to speak, to take our own lives?
The importance of giving this darkness that hangs over life a language and a face cannot be emphasized enough. The suicide statistics in this country speak for themselves: in the last 20 years, around 600 people have taken their own lives in Norway each year. In 2021, a total of 658 people took their own lives. On a weekly basis, approximately 12 people choose to end their own lives. If one calculates 10 survivors per suicide, 5,000–6,000 people will be affected in Norway annually. Around 3,000 people each year are directly affected in Oslo and the surrounding area alone, not to mention extensive underreporting and underreporting.