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Comment by stateofnounion | Hacker News Reader

Did you even read the study? Risk of depression was not affected and suicide wasn't even a factor that was considered.

> Compared to pre-pandemic, there was an overall decrease in risk of anxiety, and an increase in wellbeing but no large change in risk of depression

https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Young-Peo...

Also, for all of the extremely attentive readers like pwinnski out there, I'm sure they've already come across research on increased rates of suicide due to economic despair https://wellbeingtrust.org/areas-of-focus/policy-and-advocac...

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The projection of increased suicide in that study is based primarily on unemployment rate, but unemployment in 2020 is considerably different from unemployment in 2018 (the year they used as a baseline) due to unusual federal benefits that left as many as 68% earning more while unemployed than they did while working[0]. Actual suicide rates do to seem yet to be climbing as predicted, although it will take some time to see what the actual deleterious events turn out to be.

[0] up to 68% https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-americans-are-gett... or 47% https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/47-percent-will-mak... https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanguina/2020/04/28/some-earni...

I read this in the article "There was a 2% decrease in boys at risk of depression and a 3% increase in girls at risk of depression" but I guess that's not considered a "large" change.

The study also reported specifically that "Students at risk of depression pre-pandemic showed a reduction in depression scores in comparison to students with no depression pre-pandemic (HADS score of 0-6) who showed an small increase in depression scores." So it was the very students most likely to be depressed before the pandemic that are doing (slightly) better, and the small increase (from 3.0 to 3.9) does not raise students into the range considered most dangerous (7+)

Please try to avoid personal jabs and rule-breaking questions, thanks.

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