More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023–more than any year on record | Hacker News Reader

More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023–more than any year on record

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51 pointsgrecy66 comments

It's fairly alarming if you also look at deaths from drugs and alcohol. A lot of those deaths are reckless behavior in the face of profound depression. Which isn't suicide, but surely related.

See the chart on page 4 in this doc: https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/TFAH-2023-Pa...

The combined rise is pretty notable.

"Suicide's for cowards he said

While sat drinking himself to death"

- Mercedes Marxist by Idles

> A lot of those deaths are reckless behavior in the face of profound depression. Which isn't suicide, but surely related.

If you crawl into a bottle and kill yourself with alcohol, but very slowly, over the course of months/years, is that also not suicide?

According to the CDC, no. But obviously they are closely related.

I don’t think suicide statistics include cases like this.

1. Obviously the CDC won't count those as suicide

2. In general, making a distinction between intentional self-harm and self-harm due to recklessness can be useful in some instances.

2. How would you? Where's the point where the one becomes the other?

(rhetoric question)

You cannot define intention like that, because then it could be applied to almost anything, for example, extreme overeating.

That is sad, and I write that as someone who has been close to the edge: https://jakeseliger.com/2024/01/23/will-things-get-better-su... due to medical challenges.

Death leaves a hole in the social world that can never be filled.

Jake, I just read the blog post you shared. I loved it. The message and the writing style.

I'm glad you love it; it's a fraught, difficult subject, for obvious reasons, and yet also, I think, an important one, despite the difficulty. Recent experiences have made it unpleasantly germane to me.

Something is deeply wrong in America.

Speaking as someone who finds myself close to the edge at times. My whole generation is on Prozac (myself included). Self-medication is rampant (myself included but improving). There’s a general hopelessness amongst my peers. I don’t think many would say we’re looking at a better, brighter tomorrow.

I could list 100 things that make me feel this way. But it’s more than that. It’s something else. Looking around - this country is exceedingly sick. The vibes are bad. Like how dogs can sense someone untrustworthy.

We’re all told “it gets better”. That’s great. But you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

I’m here by shear willpower I guess but it continues to not pay off.

Without listing 100 can you list 10 just to get a general idea?

I'm not sure what generation we're talking about. I'm in my late 30s and I don't have the same doomsday outlook on life.

Probably (younger) Millennial or Gen Z based on the latest data

https://gizmodo.com/unhappy-gen-z-millennials-us-drop-happin...

For reasons, there was some discussion about it here[0]. I'd say personally the Death of God followed by humans killing the biosphere are my top 2, but there's plenty to choose from.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39767329

Im over 30, but..

1. Job market is really difficult, somehow on both sides

2. The f*deral government is getting more brazen with it's gaslighting on the following topics

  2a. Inflation

  2b. The job market

  2c. Global conflicts

3. Products are sinking in value and increasing in cost
4. Everything is a scam, you have to be vigilant when buying groceries now.
5. EVERYTHING IS A SCAM. Even something as silly as someone doing yarn stop motion animation to replicate the netflix intro was a lie.
6. The internet is becoming a flood of garbage even wothout AI, but its's getting even worse.
7. We're somehow living through a "post truth" transition. Was that something anyone even remotely considered 20 years ago?
8. Businesses are trying to get you addicted to something, because selling something useful isn't enough anymore.
9. Starting a business is getting harder because you have to compete with liars and scammers competing with literal truckloads of money behind them.
10. The atrocities that are being committed on your behalf so all this can keep going. e.g. slave labor for lithium batteries.
11. The lack of control over any of the above
12. Plastic bits everywhere
12a. you cant use plastic without being a monster 12b. You cant not use plastic
13. Corn being used to fatten everyone up, while also being subsidised so it also steals money from you
14. Copywright laws designed to make everything harder, including benign things like buying a new tv and having to update other equipment to comply woth hdcp
15. Your job is most likely not even slightly working to make people happier (see also everything is a scam)
16. Having children is no longer an asset its a liability
16a. This is going to wreck our retirement
17. Looming financial collapse (see also f*deral gaslighting)

18. Housing is expensive because people are playing games with the market.

  18a. Said people are going to get bailed out with your money for losing said game

19. Disappearing to the woods wont help with any of this and you will also be isolating your kids while doing it

20. Old cars are getting older and new cars are getting more and more disposable.

I havent even put on my tin foil hat yet.

If people reply to this comment I'm sure we can get to 100.

I too feel every ounce of this. It's in the air. As a data oriented person I'm uncomfortable relying on "feels like" and "intuition" but that's all I have.

The best way I can describe it is "societal rot". Just 10 years ago there was optimism in the air. Now every damn day I see SEVERELY mentally ill people losing their shit in the streets and there's more and more of them each month (I live in a medium sized US city). There's human shit all over the sidewalks. Nudity in front of children. Are we supposed to think this is ok?

I recently ordered food delivery and the girl delivery driver passionately thanked me for a $9 tip. The desperation and despair in her eyes was disturbing. I see this same look in too many people. It's not normal. People seem to be struggling in a way that I've never seen in my life (I'm 34).

Also its difficult to find hope. It's no longer easy to support yourself with a high school education. In response to that more people got educated. Great! We currently have the most educated population in the history of the United States. But oh no we now have an AI rat race where the main monetization strategy is replacing those white collar jobs with AI. People can only take so much.

BTW I'm a typically very positive person (based on feedback from peers and co workers)

A productive, optimistic zeitgeist doesn't have:

- mass shootings

- a negative total fertility rate

- an epidemic of drug overdoses

- pervasive loneliness

- ridiculous homelessness

- malignant neglect

- oppressive lack of bodily autonomy

- lack of healthcare and mental healthcare

- rampant depression

- crimes and deaths of despair

- suicide

The root causes are a lack of functional political system and leadership, achievements, and economic equality. Without these, love and sex become impossible unless you're one of the special few rich or popular.

I wonder if this is somewhat related to the drop in overall religious belief. Speaking as someone who officially lost my faith after 36 years, it can be challenging to figure out how to replace the relative certainty of purpose and meaning provided by religion. Losing that sense of groundedness can be really difficult, and you have to quickly begin writing your own narrative for life (which can feel pretty fake at first).

That’s not to say that we need to keep religion around just to keep us sane. However, finding ways to communicate value and purpose at the individual level is really important.

I can relate to this. For me, having a child completely turned my life around from depression and lack of purpose. I’m even considering fostering after.

About 5% of all deaths in Canada in 2023 were by assisted suicide.

That’s stunning. I have to see a source for that or it’s too unbelievable.

Wikipedia only has it up to 2022 at 4.1% of all deaths, but it was up 31% YOY then [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada

You can read all the Canadian government’s reports. I believe the latest published was 2022 (4.1% of deaths) and it has a 20-30% annual growth rate (also from the report.) So 5% for 2023 seems easily achieved.

There are a lot of other statistics in the reports. Recommended skimming.

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications...

Just did some searching.

According to stats Canada, in 2022 there were 334,081 total deaths (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=131003...). There were 13,241 MAID deaths reported in Canada in 2022, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada). So that's 3.96 % in 2022. So I guess the claim of 5 % is actually possible.

Funny - in my mind, the ideal would be 100%. No accidents or suicides, just people choosing to end things peacefully once they’ve reached the limits of medicine.

Via Wikipedia for 2022:

  13241 / 334623 = 0.040

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada#Statistic...

A fair number of those are probably terminally ill patients who don't want to wait to die in growing pain/humiliation.

If you think about how assisted suicide is applied in Canada (or at least in Quebec) it's really not that surprising.

Despite the somewhat negative coverage medical assitance in dying is really given to people with days/weeks to live as a way to skip the suffering of when your illness is not quite advanced enough to kill you, but is definitely advanced enough for the person to live in considerable pain.

It's very common among terminal cancer patients.

If, say, 50% of people who die do so from extreme old age or wasting away from a disease they'll never recover from, what's surprising about a culture where 10% of that population decides to end their life a few months early on their own terms?

Stepping back, why is something outside your own cultural norms unbelievable in a general sense instead of it feeling natural to you for there to be different cultures? You don't have to agree with another culture, but why is it uncomfortable for it to exist?

Not surprising. There are internet forums dedicated to help young people commit suicide. Yes, these forums offer detailed guides on how to best kill yourself, a marketplace to exchange the necessary materials, and a section where undecided members receive social approval to commit suicide. I assume that's what they include as assisted suicide.

I feel sad reading this today. This Friday will mark 10 years since my childhood best friend died by suicide. This happened when I was in my early 20's and at the time didn't quite understand how to process. I was so angry over the situation I couldn't think about it with a clear mind. Over the last 10 years I came to learn that the people around me are more important than any anger or grudge I could hold against them. All the moments I've been hurt, angry, or disappointed will never outweigh how much I care about them.

My childhood best friend died by suicide 2 years ago, after we had been out of contact for ~7 years. We were around 26 at the time. I had no idea what to about it, and it's something I still have to deal with as I get more in touch with my memories of childhood. I'm starting to develop more compassion and gratitude for my past friends, even if we're not friends anymore.

This has floated as the tenth leading cause of death for some time.

It fell during the pandemic, sad to see it back.

https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/index.html

The video ends with, "... and maybe most importantly, how do we pay for it."

Is money really the most important consideration though? 1.7 million attempted suicides also has a cost associated with it; Only some of that cost is directly visible in finances.

2022 was also a record year, but driven mostly by older adults and suicides were down in young people. I am having a hard time finding demographic data from 2023 but I wonder if it is a similar trend.

My personal experience has been that most people I know who killed themselves were older and had a dementia diagnosis. They wanted to go out on their own terms.

Video is a bad way to convey information like this. What's the source? CDC suicide data doesn't look at all different for 2023 compared to say 2022. This seems a bit of a clickbait title. https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal/trends.html

I wish news orgs would state these facts on a per-capita basis. Population goes up every year after all, so a record number of X if it is related to population...well, duh. This is like claiming California has the most rich people, poor people, Trump voters, and deaths, when compared to another other state. As it stands, I have no idea if there is a problem or not.

[edit]

These numbers are for 2022; I can't even find preliminary numbers for 2023; TFV cites the associated press, but haven't found it yet.

14.3 per 100k, which is the highest since 1941; in the middle of an economic depression and on the brink of a world war.

same for controlling for demographics

My nephew had a spouse cheat problem, one day after drinking, shotgun...

Yeah so weird I was snapchatting him days earlier

as it stands - not as it should be or as i'd like things to be - i think that suicide is becoming a valid and reasonable life choice. suicide is unnecessarily emotionalized and moralized in my opinion. it is okay to decide that the party is over and take the consequential steps. but i think it should be a personal decision. i find it despicable when the government starts to incentivize or encourage it as it seems to be the case in canada. but i also think it's just as despicable to criminalize it like in germany.

We need more parks.

its a larger scale than that. we need to be allowed to be human again.

At some point we might realize that maximizing shareholder value wasn’t the right way.

1. quality

2. price

3. service

You only get to choose two.

'Pick _at most_ two'; though these days we're lucky to optimize for even one, let alone any!

Tell that to the shareholders! Won’t someone think of them for a change? Those fourth yachts aren’t going to buy themselves!

For a long time investments have been promoted as the best way to save money. I bet there are shareholders right here, reading my reply. You can tell them directly how their investments indirectly enshittifies the world.

As a yellow-bellied sapsucker, the human transformation ban has caused me to consider killing myself many a time. I went to see a Avatar : The Way of Water in 3-D the other day and I had to keep turning my head repeatedly to see.

Ah, we're doing that thing where we say the thing we want, projecting its absence as the cause of something undesirable. Here's mine: We need more turn-based couch co-op video games.

I mean, yeah, usually when people want something it's because its absence is undesirable. Video games already have a system that encourages their existence; parks are fundamentally revenue-losers on the other hand, and building them is more of an act of investment in humanity than a result of economics.

Suicides are undesirable, but parks won't solve them.

I don't agree, but let's pretend you're right. What will then? No sense in dismissing the idea without an alternative.

I told you: two-player couch-coop turn based games. We need more of them.

Those are already well-incentivized. What’s the incentive for creating a park?

It's nice to have parks. They're well incentivized. As a matter of fact, I believe humanity has seen many more park-years than multiplayer-turn-based-couch-coop-years.

True (well, except for the part about parks being well-incentivized), but I bet if you draw a graph of time spent in multiplayer-turn-based-couch-coops versus number of school shootings the line goes up and to the right.

I bet if you draw a graph of number of parks vs. number of school shootings over time, that one goes up and to the right too.

Not per-capita. And anyway, the point is that people need to be close to them. It wouldn’t matter if you split the Mojave Desert into 50,000 smaller parks.

If you graph number of internet posts conflating correlation with causation and school shootings, that line also goes up and to the right.

Neither will two-player couch-coop turn based games, but both will nudge the needle in a beneficial direction.

There's parks. They're mostly empty.

OK, but are most people within 1 kilometer of a park?

> People living more than 1 kilometer away from a green space have nearly 50 percent higher odds of experiencing stress than those living less than 300 meters from a green space [1]

[1] https://www.nrpa.org/our-work/Three-Pillars/health-wellness/...

population growth and aging are a thing

Was there a point involved here, or is this just a particularly vague public service announcement?

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