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US Suicide Rate Surges To Highest Level In Almost Three Decades, Says Report (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: The suicide rate in the U.S. has surged to its highest level in almost three decades, according to a new report from the CDC. There was no explanation for the rise but some experts have pointed to increased abuse of prescription opiates and the financial downturn that began in 2008 as likely factors. The report did not break down the suicides by education level or income, but previous studies found rising suicide rates among white people without university degrees. CDC reported on Friday that suicides have increased in the US to a rate of 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The overall suicide rate rose by 24% from 1999 to 2014, according to the CDC. However, the rate increased 43% among white men ages 45 to 64 and 63% for women in the same age-range. In 2014, more than 14,000 middle-aged white people killed themselves. That figure is double the combined suicides total for all blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, American Indians, and Alaska Natives. The suicide rate only declined for only two groups: black men and all people over 75.
I've written software since the 70s. Never had a problem getting a job. In '08 I left a good company to join a startup, cuz I was young and stupid and wanted a million bux. Startup flamed out after a year. No sweat, I'll just get another job.
Since '10 you wanna guess how many companies I've interviewed for? 0. Exactly 0. Nobody even wants to interview a 50+ person, let alone hire them. I've got 30 years experience with embedded systems. I've written several Linux device drivers. I've written 3x more for systems other than Linux. I've designed systems from back of the napkin descriptions. I'm pretty good at maybe 10 languages, expert in 3-5. Biggest of all, I understand the importance of SCM and bug tracking.
I'm not gonna shoot myself or anything, but I've got friends my age in the same boat I'm in. Unemployed for years, no health insurance, no income, nobody wants to interview us. Our golden years are looking like fools gold to us.
Lost my job last year and I don't have any hope of finding a new one. My health sucks too but not enough to get disability. And my savings is running out. I've been living off my 401K so tax time this year took a lot of the money I had left, and they hit me with quarterly tax stuff for 2016 because they think I'll make too much money.
No you idiots. I am making zero money.
I can't afford my Obamacare, at almost $300 a month so that's going to cancel. Can't get medicaid or food stamps because I made too much money last year even though I haven't been employed at all since September. Well, also single men don't get coverage anyway. We don't matter.
So what am I supposed to do when the last of my 401K runs out? I have enough money left to last three more months. No kids, no spouse, a few worthless pets and me, age 46. And I am too sick and too weak and too out of options to care any more.
Job? I've tried. They want kids fresh out of school who will work twice the hours for the money. 15 years of experience from my last job is not of much value to anyone else when they can just hire some kids or H1-Bs cheap. Plus, I have no degree Hell I didn't even finish high school. I've worked and worked and worked for all these years and have nothing to show for it. So I am looking at GED and starting all that stuff and trying to pass it all and somehow afford college? At my age? With what money? I haven't been in school of any kind in decades and my mind is not up to it.
So yea I am thinking there is just no fucking point to this any more. I see no way out, no way forward. And I can't even TALK to anyone because the moment you tell someone you feel hopeless, they treat you like a mental case. Locking me in a padded room is not going to HELP. So I can't even say anything to friends. I can't tell them anything. I'm all alone.
When the money runs out, I'm done.
What is success?
What is beauty?
Axiology is a study we do not teach much or consider much these days.
The ancient Greeks studied axiology, ontology, and epistemology. They were curious about beauty, truth, value, belief, and opinion. This was the glorious age of the great philosophers who thought that they should be kings and rule the world.
Fast forward to 2016, in general, as a society, we no longer discuss these things and they are spoon fed to us by media, commercials, Facebook, CNN, Fox News etc... Sure there are still people who think about these things, but our culture is youth driven and based on consumerism.
Live has to be lived intentionally, with thoughtful care and purpose.
Things "are what they are" and we have a choice in how we react to them.
So many have lost hope, but I say to you, chose how you will react.
Life isn't some game you win or lose. Life is a grand adventure meant to be lived and experienced. You can do this from anywhere.
You are not your paycheck.
You are not your job.
You can always start over.
You always have a choice.
You can chose to let circumstances define you or your can chose to rise above them and find new truths.
You can chose to worry or you can chose to live.
No one is guaranteed another minute, embrace life, don't lose hope, chose to be a force for good. Embrace the adventure this life has to offer.
Do not give up!
Most of history was a worst time to be alive than right now, for the average person at least. It just somehow always seems to be fashionable to claim that "things were always better in the good ole days". It's just stupid cliche' bullshit from entitled brats.
One form of depression comes from low serotonin.
The metabolic pathway goes: 5-HTP->Tryptophan->Serotonin
Note that corn-fed stock (chickens, turkey, and such) is lower in tryptophan than free-range stock
Perhaps our modern diet is lower in tryptophan that our bodies are evolved for?
Serotonin (and all other neurotransmitters) are sent from one neuron to another, and then reclaimed. The reclamation process isn't 100% effective, some small amount is lost in the process, but the end result is that the brain doesn't make Serotonin very fast. It doesn't need to, because it expects to lose only a little during reclamation.
(This is the mechanism of SSRI antidepresants: they interfere with the "reuptake" process.)
If you have a job or environment that requires creativity, you may be exercising your Serotonin pathways a lot, leading to low serotonin. This is why the stereotype of "artist" includes dark, moody, and prone to suicide.
Maybe the rise in suicide is due to our fast-paced life that demands more creativity from many workers (such as programmers), while at the same time presenting us with lower Serotonin precursors such as Tryptophan.
Just a thought, probably isn't be true.
It's almost certainly due to the financial downturn and rise of prescription opiates.
Wrong. The collapse of the American economy was predicted a very long time ago for the exact reasons that make the basis for your societal and economic ideology.
Just to be clear, at the same time there were people predicting a new era of wealth and happiness.
Economics is like that - you can always find someone who correctly predicted something (after the fact).
I wasn't trying to be mean, or to get you riled up.
Economics really is a religion of sorts, a series of overlapping schools of thought and rationalized theories.
People who give sermons about this economist or that making future predictions usually don't add anything to the discussion.
I see problems, failed predictions, bad statistics, and lack of fundamentals in pretty-much every economic theory I come across.
Question: According to Irwin Schiff, what is the best value for inflation?
I don't mean "a little is good, a lot is bad, and negative is very bad", I mean what numeric value is the best value to have in our economy?
If the answer is "it depends", then what's the formula? What are the dependencies?
That's a fundamental, basic premise of economics. All throughout Schiff's writings, he talks about inflation: how the government uses it, how the fed controls it, and how it affects our lives.
But he never sets down in clear text: this is the value it *should* be.
Why is that?
BTW, Schiff is that guy who claimed that there was no law requiring people to pay income taxes.
How'd that work out for him?
I don't think it's any of that. I think it's just plain drug abuse, which isn't helped by the fact that drug abuse is so demonized, and often by people who themselves have abused drugs. I'll bet that if you correlate drug abuse rates by race like they are doing with suicides, and charted both over time, you'd probably see them follow one another closely. Drug abuse is difficult to track without any sort of conviction or anything like that though, and if you admitted it to any body that collects this information, you're painting a big DEA target on yourself. Have a lot of money in your bank account or in cash? Duh, known drug abuser, we'll have to confiscate that, and if you want it back you'll have to prove your innocence. Not to mention being placed on government watch lists, no fly lists, and having your communications tapped.
Given that SSRIs are known to sometimes (for reasons unknown) cause suicidal ideation where there was none before, and the way we tend to hand those out like candy, I would say those are far more likely than the opiates to be causing a rise in suicide.
I'm currently exploring the theory that a) there are 4 forms of depression, each caused by low levels of one category of neurotransmitter, and b) the first form is caused by low serotonin.
My working theory is that SSRI's sometimes fail because either a) the depression is due to a different transmitter, and/or b) SSRI's won't help if you have little or no serotonin to begin with.
This could be why SSRI's sometimes increase the chances of suicide. The cure would be for the patient to make more serotonin, not to interfere with its proper workings.
Another form of depression is from low dopamine. The two types are similar, but can be distinguished. Serotonin is the "happy" transmitter, and low levels are associated with dark moods and suicide, while dopamine is the "reward" transmitter, so low levels are associated with tiredness, low energy, and the feeling that tasks are pointless.
I suspect that a survey or questionnaire could be used to identify the particular type of depression a person has, and given the results lead to a specific treatment of one of the transmitters.
I'm still researching, but this one proposed mechanism seems to explain a lot of things in the literature. Most notably, that depression appears to be a resource depletion disease.