在英国，谈论自杀很难回避。保守党领袖凯米·巴登诺克最近警告称，遗产税的变化意味着农民“实际上是在自杀，以免他们的孩子不得不缴纳这笔税”。观看关于Meta的新片《社交审判》，会弹出一则广告：“Instagram导致了我女儿的死亡”。这是莫莉·拉塞尔家人发起的一场运动，莫莉是一名14岁的女孩，在看到Instagram上类似内容后自残身亡（Instagram由Meta所有）。
Talk of suicide is hard to avoid in Britain. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, recently warned that inheritance-tax changes mean farmers “are literally committing suicide so that their children don’t have to pay it”. Watch “The Social Reckoning”, a new film about Meta, and an advert will pop up: “Instagram helped kill my daughter”. It is a campaign by the family of Molly Russell, a 14-year-old girl who died by self-harming after she had seen similar things on Instagram (which Meta owns).
自雷丁的校长露丝·佩里在学校检查后自杀已过去三年多，教师们仍以她的名义开展运动。“我不希望再出现另一个露丝，”一位教师今年夏天说道，呼吁彻底改革检查制度。
More than three years after Ruth Perry, a headmistress from Reading, killed herself following a school inspection, teachers still campaign in her name. “I don’t want there to be another Ruth,” said one this summer, calling for the inspection regime to be gutted.
值得庆幸的是，自杀并未呈现增长流行趋势。英国人自杀的比率与过去几十年大致相同。去年，英格兰和威尔士地区有6000人自杀。变化的是英国上层社会对这些死亡的态度。自杀曾被视为罪恶。1961年前它是犯罪行为；此后被视为悲剧。如今，然而，自杀已成为一种论点。
There is, thankfully, no growing epidemic of suicides. British people kill themselves at roughly the same rate as they have for the past few decades. Last year 6,000 people did so in England and Wales. What has shifted is the way Britain’s establishment treats these deaths. Suicide was once a sin. Until 1961 it was a crime; then it was a tragedy. Now, however, suicide is an argument.
政策讨论中，惊人地经常以其是否可能导致某人自杀来衡量。在20世纪，议员们很少提及此类问题。如今，他们每年要讨论数百次。2025年，自杀议题出现在关于庇护申请、AI政策、公共财政、足球监管、特殊需求安排、海员、“春季声明”、跨性别权利和福利体系的议会辩论中。此外，还曾围绕男性自杀、心理健康以及是否合法化协助死亡进行过完整的辩论。
Policy is discussed surprisingly often in terms of how likely it is to make someone kill themselves. In the 20th century mps rarely mentioned such things. Now they do so hundreds of times a year. In 2025 suicide featured in parliamentary debates on asylum claims, AI policy, the public finances, football regulation, special-needs provision, seafarers, the “spring statement”, trans rights and the welfare system. There were also entire debates on male suicide, mental health and whether to legalise assisted dying.
最初，人们只是试图正视这个严峻的现实；但这种态度逐渐演变成了一种令人不安的现象。曼彻斯特大学的路易斯·阿普尔比爵士指出，像拉塞尔家族这样的悲痛家庭在2010年代初开始公开发声，希望能防止类似悲剧的再次发生。然而很快，任何关于心理健康的讨论都不可避免地会涉及到自杀的话题。在这些讨论中，真诚的意图与 cynicism（指愤世嫉俗的态度）混在了一起：有些人确实希望提高公众对心理问题的认识，而另一些人则只是想通过这些讨论来赢得争论。
What began as healthy acknowledgment of a dark reality has morphed into something troubling. Bereaved families like the Russells started speaking out to prevent similar tragedies in the early 2010s, says Sir Louis Appleby, a professor at the University of Manchester. Soon enough, no mental-health story was complete without a claim about suicide. At this point the sincere began to mix with the cynical. Some genuinely wanted to raise awareness; others wanted to win an argument.
路易斯爵士警告说，这样做对那些已经处于困境中的人来说是一种伤害——因为他们会听到这样的信息：“像你们这样的人，面对同样的问题，选择了自杀。”在政治语境中，自杀往往被政客们视为对某些政策的“合理反应”。例如，关于农业遗产税的争论很快就被歪曲成了“绝望的农民选择自杀”的论调。2024年，英国全国农民联盟的汤姆·布拉德肖表示：“当相关法律实施时，农民们很可能会认为‘自己本就不该存在于这个世界上’。”
The risk, says Sir Louis, is “to already-distressed people who hear the message: ‘People like you, facing similar problems, are taking their own lives’.”Suicide is too often framed as a logical response to policy by politicians. It took little time for a debate about inheritance tax on farms to focus on the idea of desperate farmers killing themselves. Farmers “may well decide that they should not be here” when the law was introduced, said Tom Bradshaw of the National Farmers’ Union in 2024.
政府如果选择某种特定的政策（而忽视了自杀预防组织的建议），自杀就被描绘成一种不可避免的结果。这种做法确实产生了效果：次年，工党确实对农业遗产税政策进行了调整，给予了农民更多的优惠。
Rather than something preventable, suicide is portrayed as inevitable if the government chooses a particular course of action (trampling on guidance from suicide-prevention groups). And it works: Labour duly made its inheritance-tax reforms more generous to farmers the next year.
当自杀问题在政治讨论中占据主导地位时，辩论往往会沦为胁迫或恐吓的手段。任何关于权衡与妥协的讨论都变得不可能进行。2010年代，工党议员们曾指责那些让福利申请者生活更加艰难的政客们“手上沾满了鲜血”（因为他们导致了一些人选择了自杀）。2019年，保守党议员彼得·博恩为那些因逃税行为而被迫偿还巨额税款的人发声：“在取消这项‘贷款收费’政策之前，还会有多少人选择自杀呢？”
When suicide is prominent in politics, debate can descend into blackmail. Talk of trade-offs or compromise becomes impossible. Ministers making life harder for benefit claimants had “blood on their hands”, said Labour MPs in the 2010s, citing constituents who had killed themselves. In 2019 Peter Bone, a Tory MP, campaigned on behalf of people who had been caught using a tax-dodging ruse and forced to pay back large sums via a “loan charge”. “How many more people are going to take their lives before the loan charge is scrapped?” asked Mr Bone.
作为一种游说手段，这种策略确实取得了效果。如今，英国的福利体系比十年前更加宽容；税务机关也对这项“贷款收费”政策的要求有所放松。
As a lobbying technique, it was a success. Britain has a more forgiving welfare system than a decade ago, and its tax authority has weakened demands over the loan charge.
殉道曾经一度是极端分子的执念。如今，这种观念已经感染了那些立场中立的竞选团体。佩里自杀后，立即引发了强烈抗议，教师工会要求让检查程序减少侵入性，甚至彻底废除。一位邻近学校的校长表示：“纪念她，并让她的死不付之东流，对我们来说至关重要。”一场悲剧性的死亡必须被赋予某种意义。而在政策层面，它确实产生了影响。工党在推出削弱学校检查机构Ofsted权力的改革时，就引用了佩里的自杀事件。
Martyrdom was once a preoccupation of extremists. Now it has infected middle-of-the-road campaign groups. When Perry killed herself there was an immediate outcry, with teachers’ unions calling for inspections to be made less intrusive or scrapped. A neighbouring headteacher declared: “It’s really important to us to remember her and for her death not to be in vain.”A tragic death had to be made to mean something. As far as policy went, it did. Labour cited Perry’s suicide when it unveiled reforms hobbling Ofsted, the school inspector.
自杀只是国家每天面临的众多噩梦般问题之一。教师、农民和青少年的死亡，必须与成千上万其他相互竞争的需求进行权衡。这是一项令人毛骨悚然的工作，但对政治家而言却是基础性的。然而，英国国家正越来越拒绝承认这些权衡取舍。相反，“利维坦”以一种错位的人道主义姿态，将双臂环绕在悲痛的家庭周围。本应来自社会的同情，如今却由国家提供，这对政策制定产生了有害的影响。
Suicide is but one nightmarish problem faced by the state every day. Dead teachers, dead farmers and dead teenagers must be balanced against a million other competing demands. It is a grisly job but a fundamental one for politicians. Increasingly, the British state refuses to admit these trade-offs. Instead, Leviathan wraps its arms around a grieving family in misplaced humanity. Compassion that should come from society instead comes from the state, with pernicious effects on policymaking.
难怪在讨论自杀问题时，部长们总是躲在验尸官身后。一次尸检调查认定，Instagram在莫莉的死亡中扮演了一定角色，并建议对儿童使用社交媒体实施更严格的监管。工党随后推出了这些措施。同样，Ofsted也因未能充分支持佩里而受到严厉批评。其结果是，验尸官实际上成了立法者，他们的建议——例如放宽检查程序或限制儿童接触互联网——直接决定了立法内容。议员们最终几乎沦为了将这些建议抄写在羊皮纸上的秘书。
No wonder ministers hide behind coroners when suicide is discussed. An inquest determined that Instagram had played a part in Molly’s death, recommending far tighter rules for children on social media. Labour introduced them. Similarly, Ofsted got a kicking for not doing enough to support Perry. The result is that coroners become de facto lawmakers, with their suggestions—such as watering down inspections or limiting children’s access to the internet—dictating legislation. Parliamentarians end up as little more than secretaries transcribing them onto vellum.
即便是那些善意最足的政客，也不论是出于冷血算计还是其他原因，都会发现自己陷入某种阴暗的策略之中。英国正处于一种情绪化的状态，无法抗拒悲伤。政客和倡导者正是利用了这一点。为了表现出同情心，议员们却无意识地接受了一个可怕的观点：自杀也能带来好处。这是一种有毒的推理方式，自杀预防组织正正当其时地对此进行抗争，以免它导致更多死亡。
Even the most well-meaning politicians find themselves following a dark strategy, whether cynically or not. Britain is in an emotional state, incapable of resisting grief. Politicians and campaigners use that to their advantage. In their efforts to be compassionate, mps are witlessly embracing a terrible idea: that good can come from suicide. It is a poisonous line of reasoning, which suicide-prevention groups rightly fight in case it leads to more death.
这或许是最具破坏性的信息了。然而，这种观点却渗透到了几乎每一个政策领域。为什么自杀会成为一种政治工具？因为它确实有效。■ 《经济学人》的读者可以订阅我们的“观点”时事通讯，其中汇集了我们的最佳社论、专栏文章、客座评论和读者来信。
There could be no more destructive message to send. Yet it worms its way into almost every policy area. Why has suicide become a political tool? Because it works. ■ rs to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence.