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Suicide Rates Are Up 30 Percent Since 1999, CDC Says (nbcnews.com)
New submitter Austerity Empowers writes: Amidst all the name calling and straw man arguments about the overall health of America, sometimes it helps to look at data from people who sacrificed everything based on their perception of reality. Whatever politics you subscribe to, the feeling of hopelessness is evidently real, and frightening. NBC News: "Suicide rates are up by 30 percent across the nation since 1999, federal health officials reported Thursday. And only about half the people who died by suicide had a known mental health condition, even though depression had been thought to be the major cause of suicide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. While many cases of mental illness may have been diagnosed, the CDC also noted that relationship stress, financial troubles and substance abuse were contributing to the trends."
And well below the peak 90 years ago.
Well below where it was 110 years ago, for that matter.
Note that the previous peak corresponded with the beginning of the Great Depression. Not really sure what was happening 110 or so years ago to cause a bounce in suicide rates - it overlapped with WW1, but got started well before then....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This is the most ignorant thing I have read this year so far. Everybody knows that the poor do not commit suicide at higher rates.
The long-term suicide rate for the U.S. has fluctuated between about 10-14 per 100,000 over the last 40 years. 1999 was just the minimum, which the reporter cherry picked to try to turn this into a story. It's been higher in the past.
Also, suicide rates have been climbing up throughout the world, not just in the U.S. Curiously, homicide rates also stopped the long-term decline around 2010 and started creeping up again. So average global temperature may actually be linked (violence and higher temperatures have been correlated in the past). But nobody really knows for sure why, and anyone who claims they do is just trying to spin the story to fit their preconceptions.
No, I'm just better at reading than you are:
Read between the lines; socioeconomic status of a person is not the primary determinant of likelihood of suicide. That's why they had to drill down to community level, in order to eliminate confounding variables. There are factors aside from wealth status that affect suicide rates by a greater amount.
Bullshit. With this past week Anthony Bourdain, not a poor guy by any stretch and Kate Spade, also not the least bit poor hung themselves this week. So any argument about income equality is a load of crap. I won't even mention others like Robin Williams and a slew more not poor folk committing suicide.
This is why suicides are up, I agree.
Oh, not with your facts - your facts are almost entirely wrong, tendentious, or meaningless.
What I'm pointing to is YOUR histrionic overreaction to asserted facts that make you think that "everything is terrible"...when in fact, despite what CNN is telling you 24/7: life in 2018 is pretty fucking great by every objective measure.
"The division between the rich and poor, is without a question, worse than it was in 1999.": So? It's better than it was through the bulk of human history.
"the world is straight the fuck up, dying" No, it isn't. Humans have likely overpopulated the planet, but believe me, there will be a correction. And the earth itself? Won't even notice. The earth's ecosystems have been through FAR more cataclysmic changes than humanity could ever inflict at our worst, and after some oscillations, has returned to a fairly stable norm. Yes, likely that correction will kill lots of people but TBH with 7000+ million on the planet, losing even 50-100 million really isn't as big a deal objectively as everyone makes it out to be. (Setting aside "every life is sacred" bullshit that nobody ACTUALLY believes except at their own convenience.)
"Then we have the internet" which is basically the problem.
"Co2 is up, heat is up", the paleoclimate has spiked both CO2 and temps regularly about every 120k-140k years ago. Last one was about...140k years ago. Really, aside from some postmodern ethnocentric narcissism that insists humans are the center of everything, this is normal.
"methane bubbles are going off in siberia", happened before. There's clearly some feedback mechanism that reacts to send the climate plummeting again.
"animals are dying out, bees are dying off" yep, adapt or die; that's how Darwin works. Of course, you're only talking about highly specialized megafauna in regards animals, which are a vanishingly tiny part of the earth's ecosystems. Bees? Try facts, instead of popculture hysteria.
https://www.attn.com/stories/1... and http://www.slate.com/articles/...
"America is slowly crumbling into debt." America has been plunging into debt (not slowly) since Vietnam. Think about that: we are the wealthiest society ever in human history, yet we STILL can't pay for everything we want to have. Evolution works by death, and a society so wedded to consumption beyond its means gets what it deserves.
Violent crime is down. Modern politics are far tamer than they were 200 years ago. The economy is roaring ahead. Unemployment is at a long-time low (historic lows for minorities!). Women, minorities, and historically marginalized groups are treated legally fully as equals, and culturally we're getting there. People living at the "poverty line" in the US are better off than 85%+ of the rest of the world, including (by some measures) better than the middle class in Europe. (https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/air-conditioning-cable-tv-and-xbox-what-poverty-the-united-states) From that link:
So really...it's you. And people like you. Buying into the tocsin of doom and gloom in the media that is calculated and designed to make you anxious, make you fearful, and make you pay attention because that's how they sell advertising (or worse, manipulate you in other ways).
-Styopa
The company does not get money from you buying and selling stocks at the exchange. It's only at the IPO and when they do other issues that they get any money from the stocks.
In the UK there's also a sizeable funding issue. The government spends more on 'violence against women and girls' than it does on suicide prevention/support, even though men are 25 times more likely to kill themselves than a woman.
In divorce cases women can get legal aid; men can not.
In domestic violence situations there are hundreds of refuges funded for women. Very few in the whole country for men. Funding for domestic violence is almost all targeted towards helping female victims too, and at least one of the national domestic violence charities assumes men are abusers (and is demanding gendered legislation to provide protections to women but not men).
That's before you look at the gender imbalances in the justice system and the family courts, the impossibility for men to interact with women without risking a charge of harassment, the demands that men should show emotion combined with criticism when they do, the suspicion men face when alone with children, the constant barrage of media hatred towards masculinity..
It's no wonder some men are struggling to cope.
Except the stats don't back up the 'sky is falling' position...the world is much better now than ever before. And it is much better for the poor than it was before.
I, for one, don't miss polio, small pox, massive deaths in wars, and a lack of access to information.
Leftist, centrist, rightist...the one thing they all have in common is they are pessimists. Put on some Louis Armstrong, enjoy the sun, and then make the world even better for the future.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
It's not about coping. It's about the inability to actually get anywhere through hard work. Animals need to have a purpose for their survival instinct to work. Lots of animals will kill themselves in certain (usually non hospitable) environments. If the world is just becoming shittier even with a ton more people working more hours than before, at some point, it becomes completely obvious that we're just making some kike fuck rich while our kids are eating processed poison, inheriting a worse world than we did (which was, in my generations case, a worse world than my parents did). If all we're working for is to survive one more generation and make even more rich kikes who will try to genocide our progeny, why not just skip a step and jump off now? I think this might only make sense to a man.
The rate of debt growth in the US grew at about the same rate from WWII to 1980 (the Vietnam war ended in 1975). It wasn't "plunging". It didn't start to explode until Ronald Reagan took office. If you want to point to a cause of national debt, you can point to trickle-down economics, which has been the US flavor of late-stage capitalism since 1980 through today. Supply side doesn't work. It was voodoo then, and it's voodoo now.
You are welcome on my lawn.