Senicide or geronticide is the abandonment to death, suicide or killing of the elderly.
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Societal views and legal repercussions have varied greatly in regards to senicide.
Focusing on "old people", van Hoof writes that, of the 960 cases he explores, 87 address the motives of old people to commit suicide.[1] Of these suicides, twenty were motivated by impatience, seventeen by humiliation, twelve by vanity, and ten by suffering. Van Hoof also provides statistics for the manner of the suicide, both successful and unsuccessful. Starvation was the most widely used, accounting for eighteen of the sixty-one cases available. Suicide via the use of weapons was second most prevalent making up thirteen cases, followed by the use of poison in eleven cases.[2] The use of various methods (seven different methods are reported in all) suggests that no particular technique was believed to be the most proper or entirely condemned. However, that Athens had a law focusing on suicide by hanging indicates that this manner of suicide was especially disdained, perhaps because the death was intimately connected with a structure that could not be easily removed, such as a tree. Thus, the act of purification, should it be deemed necessary, would be more difficult to perform.
Senicide as an institutionalized practice, however, seems to be much less common in ancient Rome and Greece. Parkin provides eighteen cases of senicide which the people of antiquity believed to happen.[3] Of these cases, only two of them occur within Greek society, one within Roman society, and the rest falling outside of these two cultures. One example that Parkin provides is of the island of Keos in the Aegean Sea. Although many different variations of the Keian story exist, the legendary practice may have begun when the Athenians besieged the island. In an attempt to preserve the food supply, the Keians voted for all people over sixty years of age to commit suicide by drinking hemlock.[4] The other case of Greek senicide occurred on the island of Sardinia, where human sacrifices of fathers seventy years old were made by their sons to the god Cronus.
The case of institutionalized senicide occurring in Rome comes from a proverb stating that sixty year olds were to be thrown from the bridge. Whether or not this act occurred in reality was highly disputed in antiquity and continues to be doubted today. The most comprehensive explanation of the tradition comes from Festus writing in the fourth century AD who provides several different beliefs of the origin of the act, including human sacrifice by ancient Roman natives, a Herculean association, and the notion that older men should not vote because they no longer provided a duty to the state.[5] This idea to throw older men into the river probably coincides with the last explanation given by Festus. That is, younger men did not want the older generations to overshadow their wishes and ambitions and, therefore, suggested that the old men should be thrown off the bridge, where voting took place, and not be allowed to vote.
The societies of antiquity viewed suicide and euthanasia much differently than does modern culture. Although factors such as better medical and psychological insight have affected contemporary society’s view of suicide and euthanasia, much of the shift in opinion of these forms of death occurred because of the change in religion — that is, Greco-Roman society was dominated by pagan religions that did not categorically condemn suicide and euthanasia.
Modern Christianity does not support the practice of suicide or senicide, holding that only God has control over a person’s life and death.[6]
Ancient philosophical thoughts varied greatly in this respect. Plato bifurcates suicide in Laws: although killing oneself out of grief, misfortune, or state injunction is acceptable, to commit suicide “owing to sloth and unmanly cowardice” requires purification rituals and demands that the body be buried without an epitaph.[7]
Aristotle viewed suicide as an unjust act: “when a man in violation of the law harms another (otherwise than in retaliation) voluntarily, he acts unjustly.”[8] Thus, for a man to harm himself, Aristotle reasons, is an unjust act.
Pythagorean doctrine held that all creatures were being punished by the gods who imprisoned the creatures’ souls in a body. Thus, any attempt to alter this punishment would be seen as a direct violation of the gods’ wills.[9] In the fourth century BC, the Hippocratic Oath was developed and reads, “I will not give a fatal draught to anyone if I am asked, nor will I suggest any such thing.”[10] Through the lens of the Hippocratic Oath, euthanasia was strictly forbidden. However, one of the most famous examples of deviation from this code occurred when the physician of Seneca, a philosopher and tutor of Nero, provided the scholar, who was sixty-nine at the time, with poison for one of his many failed attempts at suicide.
A common belief is that the Inuit would leave their elderly on the ice to die.[11] Senicide among the Inuit people was rare, except during famines. The last known case of an Inuit senicide was in 1939.[12][13][14]
Ubasute (姥捨, abandoning an old woman), a custom allegedly performed in Japan in the distant past, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die. This custom has been vividly depicted in the The Ballad of Narayama (a 1956 novel by Shichirō Fukazawa, a 1958 film, and a 1983 film).
This custom is practiced in Tamil Nadu, a state of India, where the traditional practice of senicide (killing of the elderly) by the family members, is called Thalaikoothal. In this, the elderly person is given an extensive oil-bath early in the morning and subsequently made to drink glasses of tender coconut water which results in renal failure, high fever, fits, and death within a day or two. [15][16] In 2010, after an expose in Virudhunagar district the administration set up teams of officers to monitor the senior citizens. [17]