Why Live

An Anatomy of Suicide Epidemics

Helen C. Epstein

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English

Columbia Global Reports
23 October 2025

Public health & preventive medicine; Diseases & disorders; Psychiatry

What causes suicide epidemics-and how can we prevent them?

Many suicides are caused by biological mental illness, but sometimes the suicide rate of a particular group jumps-two-, three-, or even ten-fold-in a short time, behaving like an epidemic. Suicide epidemics unfold more slowly than microbial plagues like flu or malaria, but they happen far too quickly to result from genetic changes and affect far too many people to be explained away as spontaneous cases of brain injury.

These epidemics have occurred in America's rustbelt towns, Russia's cities, and indigenous communities from the Arctic to the Pacific Islands. They tend not to be associated with wars, poverty, or environmental disasters but with a rupture in the social environment so profound that people come to question their most intimate attachments. The mental pain that drives suicide has been likened to the flipside of love, but if so, how does love suddenly disappear-or seem to-from the lives of thousands of people at once? In Why Live, public health researcher Helen C. Epstein sets out to find the answer.

By: Helen C. Epstein
Imprint: Columbia Global Reports
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 190mm, Width: 127mm,
ISBN: 9798987053744
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 23 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Helen C. Epstein is Visiting Professor of Global Public Health and Human Rights at Bard College. She is the author of two previous books, including Another Fine Mess:America, Uganda, and the War on Terror (Columbia Global Reports). Her writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications, and she has worked as a consultant for such organizations as the World Bank, UNICEF, and Human Rights Watch. She lives in New York City.

Reviews for Why Live: An Anatomy of Suicide Epidemics

“We live in a time of reversal in many long-favorable trends in human wellbeing. None is more disturbing than the increase in suicides. Every year, more Americans are finding it impossible to answer the question, ‘Why live?’ It is hard to think of anything more important, and Epstein’s fine book is a milestone towards understanding.” —Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics “With Why Live Helen Epstein displays impressive and wide-ranging scholarship in a beautifully written, deeply thought-provoking book on the relationship between suicide and social disruption. It sounds a warning for our times.” —Mary T. Bassett, FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard University and former Health Commissioner for New York City and New York State