Suicide rising across the US
cdc.gov
cdc.gov
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Disclaimer: I'm a volunteer.
Sure, it's awkward to offer a phone number to a stranger or even a friend in crisis, but imagine how things could be if that wasn't the case.
It's not just the US, the world feels like such a blur. Very important and fucked up things are happening multiple times daily. Things that don't affect me but a lot of times actually really do. Some thousand year old struggles seem to be getting kicked into the internet age and as a result the whole world is getting involved in local conflicts and is forced to take sides.
I legit feel as if some sort of new conception of government, nations, states, rights, is really needed. I don't know what but I'm all ears.
Get off of social media and twitter.
Stop watching/reading the news every day. If you want to keep up with current events, read a politically neutral monthly periodical.
I grew up in the 70's and 80's. Every generation looks back on its youth as "the good old days" but things really were much less stressful then and the main difference I see is that you were not connected to a firehose of real-time updates on everything.
At no point was I reminiscing about good old days, and my argument is actually very orthogonal to that statement.
If this actually happens, you won't need to be on Twitter to find out about it.
In some sense this limited what you could accomplish but it also made you think about investing time and everything was overall more deliberate.
Now, there's no going back, but you can still choose to live your life at a slower pace. The world is only a blur if you choose to ride the merry-go-round.
Me: "Is {particular social injustice} still happening in the world? I feel like that doesn't happen regularly anymore."
Person: "People are doing it all the time on Instagram. I've seen two posts this month."
Me: "I'm not on Instagram."
Person: "It happens on Facebook too. I saw one this year."
Me: "I'm not on Facebook."
Person: "Then how do you know what's going on in the world?!"
Aside from my debilitating addiction to HN, I don't use social media. I have a job, family, large circle of friends, and all the usual attachments to society. I vote and love to debate politics with pretty much anyone interested. How exactly would my attachment to society be improved by more social media? If HN went away tomorrow, would I no longer be a part of society?
I have found fruitful, enjoyable political discussion and social media to be more or less incompatible. Twitter and Facebook work great for the purpose of "rallying the base." Tweeting or sharing the latest polemic showing all your friends how truly liberal or conservative you are doesn't do much to bring in converts. But the political bases in the US are quickly approaching max rallied-ness. From here on out is the actually difficult tasks of changing hearts and minds, and that doesn't happen on social media.
If you care about politics, the further you get from social media the better.
But I think increasing communication is one of the side effects, and overall, generally a good thing. As I like to repeat often, clarity is more important than agreement, and having more ways to connect with people gives alot more clarity into who they are, as well as valid counters to my own preconceived notions. Sometimes, others viewpoints don't change my mind overnight, but often they either long-term influence more nuance in my own ideas, or even gird my thoughts to a more defensible position.
And like any social network, virtual or physical, we all tend to have those oddballs in our lives that are really into watching random things online and sharing them with others, and that to me just means more spice to life.
Twitter on the other hand ranges from pointless to toxic when it comes to conversations. It's a broadcast network that by nature narrows positions into extremes, in my experience.
Of course, like my real world relationships, I need to do some amount of curation or a break from certain folks or sometimes the entire system, but overall, it's been a net gain for me socially. YMMV :)
But I'm arguing against the sentiment that whatever goes on on Facebook is merely a symptom of politics that occurs face-to-face. We live in a world in which people can form political opinions and vote in elections without ever leaving their house.
Today, Facebook might not yet be one of "the usual attachments to society." My point is precisely that social media is increasingly seen as one of the "usual attachments," particularly among younger generations.
This seems to be an opinion often stated as fact. We all have the power to end the hopelessness. Anyone can take the first step by leaving “social media” behind. You might find that the world indeed goes on without it and is even better/richer!
The other thing is that people back then weren't wealthy enough to not be constantly working. Becoming depressed and lethargic would probably mean starving in winter. So the people that did become this way probably died off for hundreds of years.
I think it's 'natural' that we need new social-tech. Taking an incredibly coarse view of history: Hunter-gather > agriculture > industrial > today (bio_genetic-digital-AI-climate_change). At each stage we had new social structures form, why should today be any different? If anything, this fill me with hope and wonder. I've no idea what the new stage is going to look like, but I know that I am going to see it. That's really cool. Hell, I'm privileged enough to maybe have a hand in making the new paradigm. Again, I feel really lucky.
As for what other conception of states can exist, socialism is pretty cool I think
The fundamental tenet of socialism is the idea of dialectical materialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism) which basically states that there are two forces engaged in an endless struggle and future state is a result of synthesis of these two.
There's a close relationship between say Engel's dialectics and something like linear logic. However, Engel's third "The law of the negation of the negation" is fundamentally flawed. You provably can't have both adversarial relationships and still allow double negation.
In fact, I'm unable to find which exact baseline period and the "rising" period they refer to. The article only states "from 1999 through 2016" but one of their data sources only started collecting data in 2003, in a limited number of states (16 in 2010, 18 in 2014): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Violent_Death_Reporti... . Others like the NIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_Cost_and_Utilizatio...) started collecting earlier, 1988 in this case, and it's unclear how they aggregated this data together.
I'm aware that best-case approaches to disparate data such as this is often as good as it gets but I'm uncomfortable with how it's being described without being able to see the methodology the analysts used.
Here's something from the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
In England we have three main tools.
1) Public Health Fingertips: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pr...
2) The Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
3) The National Confidential Inquiry into suicide and homicide by people with mental illness: http://research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centrefor...
Farming, fishing, and forestry far outweighs other occupational groups in suicide rates for men [1].
When standardized against population, at a rate of 90.5 per 100,000 people [2]; vs the next highest, construction and extraction (52.5).
For comparison, computer and mathematical was at 32.8 for men and 12.5 for women.
[1] CDC, 2012 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm#modalIdS...
The data would be remarkable and might save many lives.
World: We're sorry to see you go. Please let us know why you are leaving, and what we could to do make this a better place to live in the future. Thank you for giving us a chance to know you.
Most people genuinely aren't interested in understanding it. If they understood, they might feel compelled to treat other people better and that isn't on their agenda in most cases, basically.
Everybody has their own experiences. Their life is unique. Telling other people that they should stick around can even be selfish, depending on what they are going through.
However. Living life is a skill, and I believe can you get quite satisfactory skill levels by making hard choices and changing your life for the better until it becomes pretty fine. You may even feel happy. Takes hard work though, and it's very hard to find that energy when you are depressed and your brain is telling you that your problems are unsolvable. But they are not. That's the good news I guess. :)
Last, I have a genetic disorder. There is no cure for that. Your assumption that anything is fixable if you just try hard enough is monstrously wrong.
The hell of it is, I am getting myself well anyway, for which the entire world would like me to know I am insane, an egomaniac, a teller of tall tales, etc and generally heap abuse on me.
But don't let the facts confuse you. Just carry on with doing things that could push someone over the edge if you did this to them while they were actively feeling suicidal.
Having been suicidal for a number of years myself and having overcome it, in my case it was fixable. People suggesting that unfortunately may not be familiar with something as agonizing as a genetic disorder, and I'm sorry for what you're going through.
Telling an internet stranger "it's fixable" when you don't know what the problem is tends to go very bad places.
My initial assertion was that, no, most people don't really want to understand because then they might have to be kinder and that isn't usually on their agenda. Given the pile on of down votes and every reply to me being dismissive and argumentative, I stand by that assertion.
Whatever interest I had in trying to do some kind of PSA here has basically died. I think I am done here. I have made my point, though, no, most people won't see that. They are too busy trying to come up with counterarguments proving they aren't somehow part of the problem.
Trying to rationalize suicide to someone will almost always lead to more self-alienation, so it's a conversation I avoid almost entirely.
Thanks for being forward. Suicide is nothing to be ashamed of and I believe most of the other comments exemplify the problem. Your message is mostly lost here but I wanted to make a point that you aren't alone.
Today is my birthday. I am trying to tongue-in-cheek look upon the down votes as HN's birthday gift to me.;-)
>But don't let the facts confuse you. Just carry on with doing things that could push someone over the edge if you did this to them while they were actively feeling suicidal.
It's not the burden of people to never say any thing wrong to a depressed person. It's certainly wrong to place causation at their feet. This is the sort of thing that leads people to blame themselves after a suicide, it's an unhealthy way of thinking about the issue.
I'm not currently depressed nor suicidal. But if you think it is on the depressed or suicidal person to meet the social and emotional needs of some random internet stranger who wants to be all encouraging, please do the world a favor and stay very far away from such discussions. Your mental model is the kind of thing that absolutely can push someone over the edge, while you try to find justifications for how it isn't your fault.
Society depends on the premise that suicide can not and should not be understood.
One such example is a middle-aged man who believes being a man means having a family you can provide for and protect, loses his job, and his wife leaves him. Another example is someone who grew up believing that lasting happiness comes from being wealthy and popular, and after throwing all else aside for 30 years realizes that it isn't the case.
> By race/ethnicity, non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rates of suicide, with rates for both groups showing notable increases across periods [1999-2007, 2008-2015] (from 14.9 to 18.1 and from 15.8 to 20.0, respectively). Rates among non-Hispanic blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders and among Hispanics were much lower, and showed comparatively modest increases across periods.
Each situation is its own, but in general, in the USA marriage is a poor choice for men. If your ex turns evil or crazy, there will be no warning and no mercy.
I don't know if people on HN (who I assume a majority of are high earners) realize just how much money you can be on the hook for if you have a motivated ex-spouse with an attorney. My ex was a stay-at-home mom with a side business as a photographer. Good luck getting a fair shake in court when you get a W-2 salary, and the other party runs their own business.
Edit: typo - I have 45% custody, not 55% custody.
Just don't get married, unless you are ready to lose it all if it goes south.
Those feelings are certainly not temporary for those who are successful and are also unlikely to be temporary for the people left in the wake of a successful attempt. My best friend killed himself in the 5th grade, then another very, very close friend in the 8th. I've known 3 other people who I would call a friend who have killed themselves. I'm 37 years old and I still think of these people. I don't dwell, but I certainly do remember these events and their supposed causes clearly.
Edit: Also, old people in the USA are more likely to be white.
[0]http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/31/in-search-of-missing-us...
But it's still a much better time to be a white male than a nonwhite male, or female, or any type of transgender, in many parts of the world.
There is now almost as much institutional hatred directed our way as there is for... no, that's overstating. There is definitely a lot of institutional hatred directed our way, but it still doesn't come anywhere close to the level of institutional hatred directed at literally every group other than white men.
The gap between white men and everyone is shrinking, but it's still there.
It sucks to be ostracized, to be tarred with inaccurate stereotypes based on your gender and race, and to have political and social barriers put in place to hold you back on the basis that you are somehow wrong because of the circumstances of your birth, the color of your skin or the configuration of your genitals?
Yes. Yes, it does, doesn't it?
However... no one is lynching white people from trees, holding picnics for it and selling photos of it in drugstores. That is what "institutional hatred" looks like and nothing even close to it is happening to white people, or likely would be tolerated in modern society. What they're getting is the kid-gloves introduction to relative minority membership status.
I used the phrase "institutional hatred" to mirror the comment to which I was replying, but indeed, what GP perceived does not, in my opinion, even really resemble institutional hatred.
Suicidal urges often last a very short amount of time (ten minutes or so), and for some percentage of people, a kind word at the right time absolutely does make the difference. It may be a small percentage, but it's worth being kind to all.
I'll put it this way - it certainly won't hurt.
Love him or hate him, agree with him or disagree with him, this is why Jordan Peterson rose to fame so quickly. Guys my age in this country are almost completely aimless and without meaningful purpose. This report doesn't surprise me at all...
None of the anxiety or malaise you describe in your comment exclusively applies to white people or men, so the parenthetical seems irrelevant.
> By race/ethnicity, non-Hispanic whites and American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rates of suicide, with rates for both groups showing notable increases across periods [1999-2007, 2008-2015] (from 14.9 to 18.1 and from 15.8 to 20.0, respectively). Rates among non-Hispanic blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders and among Hispanics were much lower and showed comparatively modest increases across periods.
Where did this come from, I wonder?
When my dad was my age he just recently bought a house, got married, had a kid on the way. His effort in growing his small business made tons of sense. For me, if it wasn't for my personal drive to be great at my job - a job which I have a passion for (and I know luck has a lot to do with that) - why would a try harder than I need to? I'm not really responsible for anything, you know?
Comparing to this map is interesting: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/...
Looking at the map from the article, you might think that NY, IL, WI, OR and WA are all in the same boat, but suicide rate in NY is half that in OR.
The common response is that "people will just find another way" but that's not supported by evidence.
>“Anything that builds in delay is working in your favor because that fever-pitch time when you’re actually willing to swallow the poison or pull the trigger is often fairly narrow,” said Cathy Barber, who directs a suicide-reduction campaign at the Harvard School of Public Health.
I'm not convinced that even eliminating firearms completely would reduce suicide rates as much as some think because people would find another means. Even the linked piece states "nobody knows what would happen if firearm availability in the US resembled levels of other developed countries." In countries where firearms aren't as available, other methods are more prevalent. I also think there's a lot of differences between the US and other developed countries along a lot of dimensions other than firearm use.
Even if it did reduce suicides, though, what does that leave people with? It's akin to saying "we're going to take away this only out for your pain without addressing your problems."
Sure, keeping them alive long enough might allow you to intervene and reduce their pain, but the fact that they are driven to suicide to begin with suggests something failed earlier along the chain.
What we want are people who don't feel driven to suicide, not people who are unable to commit suicide.
I work in suicide prevention in a country that has seen decreasing rates of suicide at a time when the government has been defunding mental health care.
Reducing access to means and methods of suicide is the most important thing we can do to stop people killing themselves.
Barriers on bridges and multi-storey carparsk save lives. Smaller pack sizes of paracetamol prevents death. Gun control would absolutely save lives.
We've had a wide range of natural experiments for this. Two notable examples are when the UK changed the domestic gas supply from coal gas to natural gas; and when the UK introduced laws for catalytic converters. Two very common methods went, and rates declined for some years after.
Of course you need the bio-psycho-social support too, but method removal is crucial.
Is there a reason we shouldn't do both?
Suggesting policy based on evidence instead of trying to immediately assign blame to your least favorite political group is a huge improvement in discourse. It's pretty absurd that this is getting downvoted.
>And for those who did not die, it's likely they would not try to commit suicide again. A 2002 review of 90 studies indicates that more than 90 percent of people who survive a suicide attempt won’t die from a later suicide attempt either.
Lots of people attempt suicide more than once, and many of them die by suicide when they try again.
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_veteran...), in 2012 there were 6,500 which seems like enough to get a slice in a pie chart.