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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."
Why do you think alcohol and drug use is so rampant? It's not the cause, it's an effect.
The world is an MMO, and less people see any point in continuing to play if it's set up so that they can't have any fun at all, much less win.
As a former drug addict I can tell you from first hand experience many drug-heads are suicidal who are too timid to commit real suicide - so they choose the alternative --- drug themselves until they forget their pain
I guess a lot of alcoholics are in similar circumstance as well
Officially those who died of OD or those who drank themselves to death are not counted as suicide --- and they should be
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"
According to the CDC more than 3/4 of suicides are men, yet the article makes it all about women. Do you feel privileged yet?
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.
People who are born into poverty are used to it and can see that other people somehow cope. When people have been comfortable for their whole lives and then a financial crash hits and end up with nothing, and don't have the mental tools to cope with that loss and uncertainty and angst and anger... That's what causes depression.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Stupid grinding, but the graphics are incredible!
bickerdyke
I know this post is probably a troll, but I'm going to respond anyway.
If you're actually considering committing suicide, maybe you should stop focusing on responding to posts that piss you off and call a suicide hotline.
Or, if you're unwilling to try to get help, go the fuck outside and enjoy what's left or your life and stop dwelling on online arguments. You might find that life is actually a lot more livable without the influx of garbage that comes from being online all the time.
That very clearly and unambiguously says that suicide rates are lower among areas that are less poor and/or experiencing less strife.
No need to read between the lines, it is a simple statement that leaves little room for interpretation.
The numbers speak for themselves 42 percent are attributed to a relationship problem. Only 16 percent were financially based - although I wonder how they differentiate. In my neck of the woods, there have been several suicides that were both relationship based as well as financially based. This was in nasty divorce cases where one of the ex-partners was financially decimated.
The point is that if you're really rich and you have to give half your wealth to your ex-wife/husband, you're still fairly rich. If you're just coping financially and have to give half your wealth to your ex-wife/husband, you're then suddenly poor.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm not talking about the poor, I'm talking about those who were middle and upper middle or the chidlren of middle / upper middle, seeing "oh fuck, shit I'm going to be poorer than my parents"
Offspring that are poorer than their parents is not a new phenomenon. Drive and success are not a lock between generations, in some cases, the opposite is true. I came from poor stock, but blessed or cursed with drive, I far outpaced them.
As well, in many cases, these parents only looked more wealthy. The children of the 80's and 90's were often living in families that had pretend wealth - maxed out credit cards, refinanced homes to buy that Escalade, flat or no savings.
It was the middle class playing rich, and it all blew up around them.
But experiencing being poor as well as being wealthy, I wasn't unhappy at all being poor.I had no intention to stay poor, but I wasn't even upset, much less suicidal. If young people today are committing suicide because of their financial situation not being that of their parents - we have failed them by teaching them that money is the only source of happiness, and without it, life is nt worth living.
As for my theory, I lay a lot of blame on the self esteem movement. I saw a lot of Millennials crashing and burning when they found out the world links self esteem with actual achievements, not something inculcated in a person for no other reason than thinking that they are the most important person in the whole wide world.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Owning stocks does not keep money in circulation. Owning overpriced property does not keep money in circulation. Owning rare artwork does not keep money in circulation. Offshoring profits to tax havens does not keep money in circulation.
The 1% absolutely does hoard their wealth and they've spent the last 40 years using their influence to get laws rewritten to exempt them from taxes so that they can hoard even more while given less than ever back to society.
Sense and enthusiasm are essential for a happy life. In a world transitioning though cyberpunk into post-scarcity faster than any science fiction writer could've ever imagined, sense, meaning and enthusiasm are constantly upended and revised.
These are not easy times. I was suicidal for a bit 6 years back. Luckily I though about what that would do to my daughter and pulled myself out of my rut of over-emphasised self-importance that often is the cause of 1st world depression and went to work to be useful to my loved ones. I bounced back pretty quick and once again these days life is awesome again. Best sex ever, neat job, webdev in high demand and - most importantly - I'm more resilient and prepared for the next slump and emotional downer.
I recommend stoicism as a life philosophy. Get's you though tough times very neatly and helps you focus on the real things. No religion needed.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
We've spent the last 50 years "deconstructing the pillars of society" that pretty much everyone adhered to up until then. As an engineer, I'm wondering if anyone ever checked to see what they were holding up.
You are partly right.
Owning residential property does not keep money in circulation, but owning stocks does - it's money that can directly be used by the company to buy machinery and hire people to work.
One of the problems Australia has, is that because of certain tax deductions that can be made investing in property (negative gearing, which lets you write renal losses off against your income tax), everyone thinks it's a great idea to buy a second or third property as an "investment" even if it earns less rent than the costs of financing and other expenses.
This is pushing house prices up to stupid levels - average houses now cost more than 12x average income) while at the same time, starving the country inf investment capital, so it's very hard to get a new business up and running - there simply aren't enough people willing to invest in new businesses, instead of property. Likewise, its very hard to get a loan from the bank to start a business - but very easy to get ridiculous oversized loans to buy residential property.
Back to the topic at hand though - I personally think that income level has relatively little to do with happiness. The real problem is when you start to live outside your means, often in an attempt to keep up with the jones's. More than ever before, we are bombarded with images of how we should be living, what the "in crowd" on social media are are doing and how much that rapper guy with all his bitches is doing so great, with his mega yacht and bling..
Is it any wonder it's so hard to keep a realistic perspective on what's needed to live a happy life, and focusing on the important things like eating right, exercising well, and spending time with family and friends instead of plugged in 24/7?
I blame social media.
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
I've been on this Earth now for almost 59 years. I've seen bad times and good. Some things are better now than they were when I was a child in the 60s and 70s and many are better. Poor people today in the US, and I'm lower middle class, live better than at any time in history. This country has people desperate to come here from places that know what real poverty is. While challenges exist there is no reason to run around screaming the sky is falling. Get a grip!
The point is that if you're really rich and you have to give half your wealth to your ex-wife/husband, you're still fairly rich. If you're just coping financially and have to give half your wealth to your ex-wife/husband, you're then suddenly poor.
Exactly. When one person has to give up the house, the car, and the Kids, then their future earnings, and gets to see their children growing in time lapse, well, they might be excused for thinking the system is out to get them, and that suicide is a fine way to opt out of it. That was exactly the case in these societal self-removals.
If you have 50 million sitting around the house and have to give up 25 million of it, you're still a millionaire. If you are making 100K a year, lose all your investments, And can look forward to paying half of your paycheck to your ex - suddenly you can be looking at not all that much more than minimum wage. That's why it is getting difficult to find people saying "Sign me up!" for that these days.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Douglas Adams wrote for the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Series (First) About this torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex. Which simply showed your place in the universe. Causing the victim to die a painful death, on realizing how insignificant they are in the perspective of the entire universe.
I expect a similar and much smaller scale effect is happening with access to the internet, and a flood of 24 hour news showing how tiny you are, and how little impact that you are doing to anything is depressing.
Back before all this or when it just started. You could be the big man in your town, the Sports Star, the business owner, the guy with a Masters or a Doctorate. Your society as relatively small, events outside you world were shown in small doses often censored to keep up with your sensibilities. Sure you may get called off to War, but you knew you part of the good guys. There are complex problems, we knew they were "Egg Heads" working on them and their solutions will fix things. But you knew your place in the world, chances are you are doing better then your parents, you have stuff that society says that you should have. You feel good about yourself.
Now being the local expert isn't a big deal, because anyone will google the answer, or watch the real pros play. Local news is mostly limited to the Weather and Traffic. All the problems of the world have half of the people blaming you/your ideals/your life style as the problem. The so called Experts show they don't have as a full grasp as you believed and can only do so much....
For me to find meaning in my life, I often need to cut myself off from the media. just because it is too much.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yeah, but it's pay2win and the griefers are rampant, creating a toxic experience. Looks like a lot of people are abandoning it.
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.