New Eastern Europe - November-December 2017

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An unfortunate record

But something lurks underneath the surface of this quite ordinary city. A local

tells us that a priest once called the city “the valley of death”.

“Maybe Kupiškis is just the wrong place. Maybe something wrong happened

here in the past. It is an historic fact we had witches here. Maybe it somehow af-

fected us,” Pranckūnas ponders.

It is not that the people of Kupiškis talk about the city as a cursed place, but

something is off. Pranckūnas sits with half a smile and half a serious face. He is not

convinced himself, but on the other hand he is not excluding anything.

One thing is clear though. “Everybody knew that we had a problem. We did not

speak about it, but we knew it,” he admits. Lithuania has the highest suicide rate

in Europe, at 29 per 100,000 people. This is almost ten times as high as Greece

(which has the lowest suicide rate in Europe) and is higher than other European

countries like Poland, Russia and Latvia. At one point,

Lithuania had the highest suicide rate in the world.

Lithuania’s cultural background is a contributor

to its high suicide rate. Suicidologist and professor at

the University of Vilnius, Danutė Gailienė, argues that

the Lithuanian mind-set, which comes partly from the

Soviet era, is a key factor.

“Lithuanians blame themselves,” she says. “They do not trust others and do

not look for help. They think they have to solve their problems on their own. We

see a lot of people who have unresolved trauma and they do not look for help or

think it is a problem for others.” Gailienė also mentions Lithuania’s strong ties to

the Catholic Church. Today, three out of four Lithuanians are Catholic. Yet, the

church condemns victims of suicide and can refuse to bury them.

Like many places around the world, the rural parts of Lithuania have a much

higher suicide rate than urban areas. This was also the case with Kupiškis – a

small city which has since managed to turn itself into the country’s poster child

for suicide prevention.

Circle of problems

The many metal sculptures and the large church should have been the city’s

famous hallmarks, but instead Kupiškis made its name for a grim reason. In a

country with the highest suicide rate in Europe, Kupiškis had the highest suicide

rate in all of Lithuania in 2015.

Lithuania’s cultural

background is a

contributor to its

high suicide rate.

Opinion & Analysis The curse and miracle of Kupiškis, Emil Staulund Larsen and Noah Groves