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Comment by daliusd | Hacker News Reader

Wondered if Lithuania will be mentioned in the article. Yes, it is. The difference between Nanuvat and Greenland is that their populations are 10 thousands, we are almost 3 million.

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I guess Lithuania has he same problem as all the Nordics, dark gloomy weather year round.

I wanted to emigrate to Sweden due to the high quality of life but the dark, drizzly, windy weather really put me off and some locals I talked to said they were really depressed by it and were either trying to emigrate or work remotely from Southern Europe.

In the Blatics it's probably worse as the economic situational is not positive for some people.

We have quite nice summers actually here in Lithuania while they become quite hot recently because of climate change. Anyway, weather is not the main cause of suicides.

> Anyway, weather is not the main cause of suicides.

What is the main reason then?

It is combination of many factors: starting from economical changes after collapse of Soviet Union and ending with cultural things.

I don't know. But if it was weather, then Finland, Sweden, and Estonia would be just as high.

Summer is only one season that's warm everywhere, and then lot of people are on holiday.

The rest of the seasons are equally important for your well being and coming from southern Austria in April where I was in T-Shirt, shorts and sunglasses to Stockholm & Copenhagen where I had to wear my winter jacket and apply lip balm and hand cream to counteract the skin cracking from the wind was quite a shock.

I love visiting Scandinavia and the Baltics but as a person who enjoys the outdoors all year round, the weather there would be way to depressing for me.

I grew up in Norway. People absolutely enjoy the outdoors all year round there. They just sometimes have to put on a jacket.

I’m from Kaliningrad, which is right next to Lithuania, and it’s actually less gloomy than Santa Barbara where I currently live. Also, SB is in the middle of a desert, while Lithuania is full of beautiful forests.

I guess Lithuania has he same problem as all the Nordics, dark gloomy weather year round.

Except the Nordic countries have a lower suicide rates than the US. The whole high rates of suicide in the Nordics is a myth.

True, however if you look in the European context, Southern countries have lower rates despite having lower standard of living. So the climate cannot be completely ruled out, it is perhaps one of the factors.

Personally if I was to guess I'd put social isolation way above climate as a factor. If you look at the statistics for Sweden for example on a county level you quickly see that most suicides are clustered in isolated counties deep in the middle of the country, far from the larger (often coastal) cities, with zero or negative population growth and without much in the way of jobs or industry.

lower standards only applies if you think about money. In every other respect, life is more pleasant in the mediterranean than in nordic countries. Source: I'm from the mediterranean and I think life in California is shit, even if I make way more money than before.

>In every other respect, life is more pleasant in the mediterranean than in nordic countries.

Only if you have money. Otherwise there wouldn't be such a mass migration of youths from the Mediterranean moving for work in the Nordics.

And opposite when approaching retirement age.

Except that doesn't show up in the data about well-being, where the nordic countries outperform the mediterranean ones.

They are wrong. Most of those surveys are designed by people with a very clear view of what life should be that doesn't reflect the values of less materialistic societies.

A good example is the corruption index published every year, when the US always comes out as one of the least corrupt countries in the world. We all know for a fact there's tons of corruption in this country, we just decided to legalize most of it. Doesn't mean the US can teach anything to any other country about corruption.

Ok, but you're asking us to trust your opinion, and your opinion on data, coming from a position of being angry about where you live. Whereas most of us choose to live somewhere that makes us happy.

But anyway, I'm sure there are great reasons to discount the corruption studies and the studies of quality of life.

I haven't seen any of them in this thread, though.

Meanwhile, being from the northwest of Germany, moving to Sweden would apparently be an upgrade for me[1]. :( It really is quite grim here for a good portion of the year and I will never get used to it (I was born and raised here).

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Europe_s...

if you can swing it move to Spain. Problem solved :)

Suicide is actually correlated with lots of sunshine and high temperatures even in colder countries like the Nordics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_effects_on_suicide_ra...

People tend to say that they get depressed by the winter, but I believe that it is similar to how people tended to say that exercise was bad for you not too long ago. Cold helps against depression in many cases, for example cold showers. If you asked people if they would be happy trading their warm showers for cold showers they would say that it would be horrible even though it likely would improve their overall happiness.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325725.php

My guess is that during the summer and spring, you see other people outdoor enjoying activities. If you are a lonely person, this can be discouraging that everyone around is having fun but you're not.

In the fall and winter, you have an excuse to stay in. Everybody else is doing the same, so you're not missing out on much.

Plus part of it is academic. For k-12 and university, you see your 'friends' and 'acquaintances' very often. During the non-academic season, you don't see people as much which can be isolating.

Plus summer and spring, has the expectation of "you're supposed to be happy". So if you're not, then this can be devastating. Winter everybody has this "we're all in this gloomy mood together".

Regardless, seasonal affective disorder is still a thing. Maybe they don't kill themselves until the spring, but that doesn't mean the lack of sunlight isn't a (delayed) cause.

I always find the linking of climate and weather to depression strange. I grew up in a place with quite dark winters. While I know seasonal affective disorder is a thing, for me, winter is cosy, and not at all depressing.

Sun exposure triggers the release of serotonin. For many people (probably most people), a lack of sun exposure will cause depression.

Your single case does not apply to the population at large.

Yes, I feel the same way. I've lived in the Seattle area most of my life, and when I went to LA for college people would constantly talk about how much they hated rain, clouds, darkness, "cold temperatures" (which to them was pretty much anything below 70), etc. but I've always enjoyed the cold and rainy seasons far more than summer. Personally, I'd rather perpetually deal with a Seattle winter than have to live in LA with the constant heat.

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