As Suicide Rates Rise, Scientists Find New Warning Signs

"Meanwhile, rates of suicide deaths are rising in the U.S. The rate jumped 24% from 1999 to 2014, from 10.5 to 13 per 100,000 people, according to an April 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

"While depression is the mental illness that is most strongly associated with suicidal thoughts, it doesn’t often lead to suicidal acts. Recent research has shown that it is other mental illnesses, like anxiety disorders, problems with impulse control and addiction, that are actually more strongly linked to suicide attempts. Most first suicide attempts occur within a year of the onset of suicidal thoughts." [Emphasis added]

"Another study from the same NIMH group has found that, among severely depressed subjects, spending more time awake between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. (as measured by a sleep study called polysomnography) is linked to increased risk of suicidal thinking the next day."

"Computers analyzed more than 30,000 different risk factors, including traditional ones like age and mental-health history. But some surprising issues—such as gastrointestinal problems, infections and injuries like rib fractures—were tied to increased risk."

"In a study published in 2010 that followed 157 people who had visited a psychiatric emergency room, subjects are asked to classify words into categories. The study found those subjects who were quickest at classifying death and “me words” into the same group had three times the rate of suicide attempts in the next six months compared with those who were quickest at linking life and “me words.” (A past suicide attempt is the strongest predictor of a future one.)"

> Dr. Nock says that some of these may be self-inflicted or related to impulsive behavior. Using the historical data, the approach was able to detect 45% of suicidal acts an average of about three years before the event.

> A study using similar methods looking at suicide risk among U.S. Army soldiers in the year after hospitalization for psychiatric issues was published in 2015 in JAMA Psychiatry. The algorithm was able to predict about 53% of the suicides in that high-risk period.

I wonder what the false positive rates on these are.

It is so very western to treat suicide as a disease, a disorder of the brain. We ignore the concept that suicide can be a rational act. In the east (Japan) suicide is considered a private decision to be respected. That doesn't mean that it isn't an evil that society should attempt to prevent. Some people have may suffer medical conditions that make them prone to suicide, but other perfectly healthy people may opt to kill themselves. We cannot treat them all as medical problems. Sometimes the answer is much more practical, sometimes the problem is purely economic.

Except in cases of assisted dieing. There we switch the approach and suddenly declare that killing one's self can be rational decision. It is strange how we muddle rationality and reasonableness, as if the fact that someone makes a decision society disagrees with is per se irrational.