I doubt the diagnostic criteria for suicide has changed dramatically during the pandemic.
Fascinating seeing how so many people do not want to accept the data as is because it doesn't fit their pre-conceptions.
Fascinating seeing how so many people do not want to accept the data as is because it doesn't fit their pre-conceptions.
Not sure exactly what you're implying here, but cherry-picking data to fit pre-conceptions has definitely been an epidemic of its own throughout the Covid situation.
The suicides went down thing really goes against what significant part if HN wants to believe.
And I just provided half a dozen links to better research that shows that this "suicides went down thing" is misleading.
So yes, let's have a conversation about people cherry-picking the data they'd prefer to believe.
Also, "number of successful suicides" is an extreme, myopic metric for mental health. Ignoring all of the upstream signs of decreased mental well-being, and focusing only on successful suicides, is like measuring societal well-being exclusively by homicide rate.
"Sure, people are depressed, anxious, isolated and panicked, have increased suicidal ideation, and are seeking therapy in greater numbers than ever before...but they're not successfully killing themselves! All is well!"
Here's Prof Louis Appleby, clinical lead for suicide prevention in England.
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/03/10/louis-appleby-what-has-...
> A year into the pandemic, what is the evidence? The short answer is that there has been little effect. But it’s more complex than that, as it always is with suicide statistics.
> First though, it’s important to stress that the graphs and figures that are used to answer this question are not dry data. They represent real lives lost, real families devastated. No suicide rate, whether high or low, rising or falling, is acceptable. Even before covid-19, there were over 6000 deaths by suicide per year in the UK, an estimated 800,000 worldwide.
[...]
> Our conclusions at this stage, however, should be cautious. These are early findings and may change. Beneath the overall numbers there may be variations between demographic groups or geographical areas. After all, the impact of covid-19 itself has not been uniform across communities.
At this point doubt is healthy, especially since similar data from different sources shows different results.
I would really like to see an attempt to critically examine all the available data and try to give a plausible scientifical explanation, leaving aside political prejudices and sides.
Can I see the source of data indicating that there has been an increase in suicide deaths in the US? So far, nobody in the thread has actually posted such "similar data."
Nebulous references to what is "plausible" and "similar data" that never appears is, of course, exactly what we don't want.
It doesn't take a genius to look at the immense, obvious damage to our mental health from excessive isolation to think perhaps there's something wrong with the way we are measuring this.
Is this the level of sloppy reasoning we have fallen to?
Epistemology is impossibly hard. Determining the strength of evidence is hard. In the places that a paper contradicts our mental model of the world, the only sane approach is to question the paper.
To put it in that context, what I am contending is that people seem to have unreasonably high priors about the impact of this pandemic on suicides that don't seem to be based on much at all, and I believe underestimate the fundamental complexity of the world, that cause and effect are often difficult to trace.
The fact that you are comparing the idea that suicides have decreased during the pandemic with the existence of ESP is, I think, emblematic of exactly this sort of false overconfidence.
Anecdotes should have some, but marginal, impact on our posterior when coming head to head with data.
> Epistemology is impossibly hard. Determining the strength of evidence is hard. In the places that a paper contradicts our mental model of the world, the only sane approach is to question the paper.
References to the sanity of one approach over the other aside, I do not see how this follows from what you said before. I agree that determining the strength of evidence is hard. I would suggest that creating a causal model of the world from anecdata might be a bit harder.
e: As a sort of meta-point, I really do find it interesting the increasing currency of Bayesian concepts in pop imagination, often combined with arguments against good inference. It seems almost like pop-Bayesianism is the sophistry of the 21st century, both in the sort of argumentation that characterizes it and as a sociological phenomenon, who it appeals to.
People are currently unhappy because of the pandemic, and people can point at that and understand that there's an exogenous cause right in all of our faces causing the problem and everyone is affected.
People are much more likely to commit suicide when they just believe that everyone else is doing fine and they're the only ones whose lives are shit.
Which is why a lot of people don't take these complains so seriously. Because of was much less isolating, everyone was going through the same thing, you was still member of same team.
It's an interesting question and something to explore. I don't think the relationship between suicidal ideation and successful suicides is strictly linear, there are a lot of variables on the path from one to the other.
That said, I think the evidence is relatively strong for a decline in successful suicide, for whatever reason. Multiple comparative studies have shown this effect.
I'm curious - have you seen a nation-wide comparative/longitudinal study of suicidal ideation? All I can find are news reports about a specific hospital or two.
Maybe someone more familiar with this area knows of something, but I haven't seen it.
How could we possibly know this? Reports of suicidal ideation is up, would be a more honest claim.
Increased reporting of/willingness to report ideation and reduced rate of suicide might both be explained by people accessing mental health support.