What about the mental health of seafarers? Well, for many it is not very good. They spend months, maybe years, away from home; they get lonely; they work many hours straight without enough sleep; they face stress and fatigue, lack of shore leave, short ship-turnaround times, and harassment and bullying. These can lead to anxiety and depression, and in some cases suicide. Depression and suicide have devastating consequences, not only for seafarers' families, but also for shipmates and the companies that employ them. A recent compilation of 12 reports from the last two decades found that out of 9,591 seafarer deaths between 1976 and 2005, at least 625 were suicides. This is an astonishing 6.5 percent, more than three times the national rate among most Western countries. In Australia, suicides represented two percent of all deaths nationwide in 1998 and 1.5 percent in 2008. It is a disgrace that seafarer suicides should be so high.
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