A rash of eight financial-industry suicides so far in 2014 has mental-health professionals trying to understand what’s behind it.
In late winter many people suffer from depression, but for bankers this is usually offset by finding out how large their bonuses will be.
However, compensation across the entire financial sector is down from years past as large firms deal with new rules pinching their bottom lines.
The other, more pressing matter for mental health pros is: Why are such a large proportion of these self- murders public affairs?
While there are no definitive theories on suicide location, many in the suicide- prevention field believe it deserves more research.
Six of the eight mysterious deaths have been from a building or in front of a train. Half of them were at work or en route.
“Our world has become so social — and the barriers of privacy have been [so] broken down. Perhaps that could be a reason for the public displays, especially for those in their 20s,” says says Carolyn Wolf, executive partner and director of the mental-health law practice at Abrams Fensterman in Midtown.
Alternatively, Dr. John Draper, project director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, suggests it has more to do with access to means than anything else.
“If you live or work in a high-rise or have access at work to harmful items — like a gun — then that could be most lethal means available, without any further meaning to location.”
But talk to any financial pro, and he or she will tell you the culture around the trading desks has changed.
While markets are up, head counts and compensation are down, and the struggle to make one’s mark is more intense.
Many traders cut their teeth on the following adage:
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.
To that end, many of today’s 20- and 30-somethings on trading desks turn to their trusted college friend, Adderall, to get running in the morning and then in the afternoon and again at night.
This drug, used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), is also this era’s cocaine, used to stay laser-focused through a workday that can routinely stretch to 18 hours.
“Substance abuse (like [that of] Adderall) only exacerbates underlying mental-health issues,” says Wolf.
“It’s a vicious cycle, combining the alpha male culture … with addiction. You lose the ability to cope,” says Dr. Draper.
Suicide statistics show that financial professions have a 39 percent higher likelihood of suicide than the general public.
In 2010, more than 38,000 Americans died by suicide, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control.
But suicide by jumping, as a number of these are, is rare, according to CBC statistics, and yet a number of the recent deaths did just that.
“Put a professional on the floor where these traders live,” Wolf suggests.
Just as every trading firm has a chief risk officer, Wolf says that firms ought to “place a risk-assessment professional to identify an employee in crisis.”
Eerie coincidence
A spate of eight suicides and mysterious deaths in the financial world so far this year has baffled. But some have several things in common.
- 5 jumped or fell to their deaths
- 3 worked for JPMorgan
- 3 died in NY or Conn.
- 2 died in London