As Suicide Rates Rise, Scientists Find New Warning Signs

http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-suicide-rates-rise-scientists-find-new-warning-signs-1465235288

by sndean • 10 years ago

45 69 10 years ago

heimatau• 10 years ago

Some big takeaways:

"Meanwhile, rates of suicide deaths are rising in the U.S. The rate jumped 24% from 1999 to 2014, from 10.5 to 13 per 100,000 people, according to an April 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

"While depression is the mental illness that is most strongly associated with suicidal thoughts, it doesn’t often lead to suicidal acts. Recent research has shown that it is other mental illnesses, like anxiety disorders, problems with impulse control and addiction, that are actually more strongly linked to suicide attempts. Most first suicide attempts occur within a year of the onset of suicidal thoughts." [Emphasis added]

"Another study from the same NIMH group has found that, among severely depressed subjects, spending more time awake between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. (as measured by a sleep study called polysomnography) is linked to increased risk of suicidal thinking the next day."

"Computers analyzed more than 30,000 different risk factors, including traditional ones like age and mental-health history. But some surprising issues—such as gastrointestinal problems, infections and injuries like rib fractures—were tied to increased risk."

"In a study published in 2010 that followed 157 people who had visited a psychiatric emergency room, subjects are asked to classify words into categories. The study found those subjects who were quickest at classifying death and “me words” into the same group had three times the rate of suicide attempts in the next six months compared with those who were quickest at linking life and “me words.” (A past suicide attempt is the strongest predictor of a future one.)"

r00fus• 10 years ago

"Another study from the same NIMH group has found that, among severely depressed subjects, spending more time awake between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. (as measured by a sleep study called polysomnography) is linked to increased risk of suicidal thinking the next day."

I wonder if something more general could be inferred - when I'm getting bad sleep (stress-related, mostly), I tend to wake up at around 4AM. My day is often cranky, sometimes I'm completely ineffective until noon.

Could overall sleep levels be more coincident with lower suicidal thoughts?

sndean• 10 years ago

I wonder if that 4am to 5am timeframe is relevant. I've been falling asleep at ~5am for the past few years...

The key part may be "among severely depressed subjects," but I've noticed that whenever my sleep changes (stress-related, too, or a random early meeting) my following day is simply awful and I accomplish more-or-less nothing.

Something that seems obvious now, but wasn't obvious to me until recently, is that people should be realllllyyy protective of their sleep. I guess that study supports that idea.

selmat• 10 years ago

I think everything is more related to sleep phases than to day-time or certain hours.

jfoutz• 10 years ago

Totally anecdata, and therefore useless, but here goes. When i wake up in the middle of the night i give myself a few minutes to try to get back to sleep. If it's work related stress, i get up and poke at something for an hour. sometimes i make progress, sometimes i don't. Fall right back to sleep and have a fine day the next day.

If it's not something i can do anything about i fret for an hour, crawl back in bed, toss and turn till morning, and have a generally bad day.

Something deep down takes comfort in the agency. at least i tried to improve the situation.

hkmurakami• 10 years ago

Recent research has shown that it is other mental illnesses, like anxiety disorders, problems with impulse control and addiction, that are actually more strongly linked to suicide attempts.

It's often said that the presence of firearms in the house greatly increases the chances of suicide since it's this spike in despair, hopelessness, and entrapment that causes the overwhelmingly strong compulsion to end things. But if you can ride out this wave, then things revert to the mean.

Firearms don't give you a second chance to rethink things, unlike swallowing sleeping pills or slitting your wrist.

fakemeatsubs• 10 years ago

What good reasons do people have for owning firearms in urban environments? (Serious)

brbsix2• 10 years ago

Jumping off a bridge or freeway overpass rarely permits you a second chance to rethink things either. Nor does kicking out a stool while hanging from your rafters. Personally I find the assortment of options available comforting.

pasbesoin• 10 years ago

Having suffered physical injuries and chronic physical impairment -- including congestion that impairs sleep and functioning -- I can say that correlation with physical health conditions causes me no surprise. Actually, I'm amazed and angry with Western/U.S. medical practice that so often and ignorantly divorces the two.

I'll probably be gone in a year or two. My life has been a downward spiral that is reaching its endpoint.

DanBC• 10 years ago

"Meanwhile, rates of suicide deaths are rising in the U.S. The rate jumped 24% from 1999 to 2014, from 10.5 to 13 per 100,000 people, according to an April 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

I think the US officially changed the way they counted suicide in that time; and coroners became more likely to report deaths as suicide.

"While depression is the mental illness that is most strongly associated with suicidal thoughts, it doesn’t often lead to suicidal acts. Recent research has shown that it is other mental illnesses, like anxiety disorders, problems with impulse control and addiction, that are actually more strongly linked to suicide attempts. Most first suicide attempts occur within a year of the onset of suicidal thoughts." [Emphasis added]

Body dysmorphia is surprisingly common and is over-represented in suicide death.

"But some surprising issues—such as gastrointestinal problems, infections and injuries like rib fractures—were tied to increased risk."

UK is aiming to tackle these with "No Health Without Mental Health", one strand of which is "people with physical health problems will experience better mental health". I'm not going to claim it's going well. NHWMH is at least 5 years old now, and parity of esteem is still lacking, and it's hard to get commissioners of physical health stuff to consider the MH impact.

perlpimp• 10 years ago

Wonder if diet high in refined processed carbohydrates is a factor. I've switched to paleo-like with fat no-carb/less protein(and somewhat calorie restricted) days and much of that anxiety is gone. Can sugar be literally murdering(some) people?

mrob2• 10 years ago

As an inanimate object, sugar cannot be literally murdering people. It's possible that it's killing people, but "murdering" is both incorrect and unnecessarily emotive language that looks like it's being used in an attempt to bias the discussion.

cam_l2• 10 years ago

google literally.. ie. informal - used for emphasis while not being literally true.

amelius• 10 years ago

Personally, I think it is because people stopped taking cod liver oil.

Also, people nowadays seem to be afraid of fats in their diets. But your brain needs (good) fatty acids to function properly.

hga11• 10 years ago

Also, people nowadays seem to be afraid of fats in their diets.

That might be because of a full 6 decades of propaganda against them, weakly if at all supported by legitimate science.

The powers that be are only now starting to admit that they might have made a catastrophic mistake, e.g. https://www.google.com/#q=cholesterol+is+not+a+nutrient+of+c...

Havoc• 10 years ago

Diet certainly affects mood, but I'd say the suicide trend is probably more connected to the isolation of modern life. i.e. Can connect to anyone via FB yet not speak to anyone for days (if so inclined)

greenspot• 10 years ago

Not sure about carb and suicide but I agree that there is a linear correlation between carbs and anxiety. If you carb in-take is higher than what you need and then you get anxious. Add processed carbs like sugar and wheat the effect is even stronger. I did many tests isolating different carbs over days and yes sugar and wheat based stuff like bread and pasta are worst. Rice and cooked potatoes and fruit are ok but here it's very important to keep the volume low. Once you pass a given threshold you feel the same effects.

superswordfish6• 10 years ago

I agree that there is a linear correlation between carbs and anxiety.

That's a rather specific thing to agree about.

superswordfish6• 10 years ago

Health-wise? Sure. But you may be less anxious due to the novelty of your new diet and the conviction that it's healthy, reinforced by the trendiness of "paleo" diets. You should be at least a little suspicious of the powerful placebo effect before jumping to bizarre theories.

sandworm1012• 10 years ago

>> Researchers are hunting for so-called biomarkers, such as patterns of brain activity on fMRI scans or levels of stress hormones in the blood, linked to suicidal thoughts and acts.

It is so very western to treat suicide as a disease, a disorder of the brain. We ignore the concept that suicide can be a rational act. In the east (Japan) suicide is considered a private decision to be respected. That doesn't mean that it isn't an evil that society should attempt to prevent. Some people have may suffer medical conditions that make them prone to suicide, but other perfectly healthy people may opt to kill themselves. We cannot treat them all as medical problems. Sometimes the answer is much more practical, sometimes the problem is purely economic.

Except in cases of assisted dieing. There we switch the approach and suddenly declare that killing one's self can be rational decision. It is strange how we muddle rationality and reasonableness, as if the fact that someone makes a decision society disagrees with is per se irrational.

dhruvkar• 10 years ago

This. I don't have muh to add besides what you've already written. The 'norms' of life are so fiercely protected, as to alienate all other views of it.

yesiamyourdad• 10 years ago

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Yet there's a whole subthread debating the wisdom of gun ownership because that's a popular axe to grind. Getting at the root of the issue is trickier. Clearly depression and suicide are popular topics on HN. We know that there's some kind of social problems that lead to depression and suicide, but the best some people can come up with is to talk about gun ownership.

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r..., the US is in a tie for 50th place for suicide rates. So in spite of the fact that the US has a high gun ownership rate, we're not anywhere close to being the top of the suicide rates.

Also, recall the articles around middle aged death rates in the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10499434 One of the takeaways is that people may be committing de-facto suicide by following a pattern of life choices (addiction for example). The "Leaving Las Vegas" effect (if you saw the movie, recall Nicholas Cage's character tried to drink himself to death) is really hard to measure.

Side note: suicide is illegal in Nepal and "attempted suicide is illegal in Nepal and people who attempt suicide when caught are subject to imprisonment, fines or both", yet Nepal is ranked 7th on the list. One might be led to conclude that this law is ineffective, if not counter-productive.

sandworm1012• 10 years ago

The gun thing is just crazy. It's one of those subjects where everyone can paint on their own philosophy. So it winds up in every discussion. That makes it a great weapon for those who want to maintain the status quo. They throw the gun debate into the mix in full knowledge that it will shut down any other meaningful discussion, thereby preventing anything from changing. In terms of suicide, guns just make attempts more likely to succeed. I'd rather focus on preventing the attempts from happening in the first place.

Laws against suicide are a little silly imho. Someone willing to kill themselves is operating at a level beyond criminal laws. Nepal probably needs to keep suicide legal for purposes of inheritance, so that surviving families don't suffer. Laws that penalize suicide risk encouraging non-suicide suicides that endanger other people such as "suicide-by-police".

Shivetya• 10 years ago

Well having had fun with depression I am never went through the suicide side of things. However what I have noticed is a lot more medications seem to be carrying the "suicidal thoughts warning" than used too. I am used to seeing the "it causes sleepiness, don't operate heavy machinery" notes but I am wondering how many combinations are needed before you find the secret "oh my god I think life would be better without me". Its like the Joker from Tim Burton's Batman, which combination kills.

klue07• 10 years ago

Computers analyzed more than 30,000 different risk factors, including traditional ones like age and mental-health history. But some surprising issues—such as gastrointestinal problems, infections and injuries like rib fractures—were tied to increased risk.
Dr. Nock says that some of these may be self-inflicted or related to impulsive behavior. Using the historical data, the approach was able to detect 45% of suicidal acts an average of about three years before the event.
A study using similar methods looking at suicide risk among U.S. Army soldiers in the year after hospitalization for psychiatric issues was published in 2015 in JAMA Psychiatry. The algorithm was able to predict about 53% of the suicides in that high-risk period.

I wonder what the false positive rates on these are.

As Suicide Rates Rise, Scientists Find New Warning Signs

Related Stories