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Comment by tudelo | Hacker News Reader

Can you elaborate why you brought up your second paragraph? I'm not sure what statement you are trying to make.

Access to means of suicide matters. Most suicidal ideation is temporary and most suicide attempts are impulsive. Men are much less likely than women to attempt suicide, but they are much more likely to die, because they tend to choose more lethal means.

In 1998, the UK reduced the maximum pack sizes of paracetamol (acetaminophen) tablets. We saw no reduction in the number of people who attempted suicide by paracetamol overdose, but a 43% reduction in deaths by that means.

https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f403

There is some evidence to suggest that gun control is effective in reducing deaths due to suicide.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26396147 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29078268 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29852823

My sister killed herself 9 and a half years ago, and I'm pretty convinced that she'd still be alive if she didn't have immediate access to what she used(+).

Due to the method, we know when she obtained it, and the circumstances around that. She got it when there were suicides in her local community, and in retrospect she had probably been thinking about it at the time. She definitely had some mental health issues at the time centered around overwork. She kept it for years, and finally used it when she had a minor setback at work.

(+ not a gun)

Quebec's suicide prevention strategy combined evidence-based practices, and managed to halve the suicide rate from 1999 to 2010, and it's been declining ~2% every year since 2010. Everything they do should be studied by anybody interested in this topic since it works. Things like restricting guns or drugs just means they will leap off a bridge or other method, it doesn't address the root causes which Quebec managed to do.

Not the OP, but higher availability of guns is correlated with higher suicide rates (most notoriously in US mountains states like Wyoming), because it makes it easier to act on impulse when people hit their lowest points, rather than muddling through because they don't have easy means.

However, I don't see any reporting on how Bourdain died, only that he was found in a hotel room. So unless it comes to light that guns were involved (unlikely, because gunshots would have been heard), I don't think this sad event begs for a discussion of guns as opposed to many other topics around the issue of suicide.

>Not the OP, but higher availability of guns is correlated with higher suicide rates (most notoriously in US mountains states like Wyoming), because it makes it easier to act on impulse when people hit their lowest points, rather than muddling through because they don't have easy means.

Or you know, there might be a third variable there... Something about declining rural areas possibly.

There is that third variable, but there are also studies that control for geography and even study a stable population of depressed patients.

There's also a lot of theory to back up the idea that guns increase suicide rates.

First, if people have to take time to prep for suicide, they have time to think and sometimes change their minds. With a gun, the time between thought and action is so small, they don't have this chance.

Second, guns have a much higher success rate than most other methods. This is why women attempt suicide at higher rates, but succeed far less often -- they usually don't use guns.

There are studies that look at a stable population, and they find that the same person is much more likely to succeed at suicide after they become a gun owner.

he hanged himself

For me, it highlights just how many suicides there are, and it also brings up how easy it is to commit suicide in a quick, (relatively) painless manner in the USA.

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