The Reason The Rich & Famous Commit Suicide

http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2011/01/reason-rich-famous-commit-suicide.html

by joshfraser • 15 years ago

78 47 15 years ago

chrisyeh.blogspot.com

keiferski• 15 years ago

Are suicide rates higher among 'the rich and famous' than among average people?

If not, this really has no merit. People kill themselves because they have mental health issues, not because they come to realize that success isn't the secret to happiness.

logjam• 15 years ago

Probably many nuances to this question, but there is some literature out there indicating increased income is associated with increased suicide risk.

One case control series reported in BMJ in a relatively large sample (~1500) found that "people with a history of mental illness and a high income are at greater risk of committing suicide than their lower income counterparts. This may be because richer people with a mental disorder feel more shameful, vulnerable, and stigmatised."

http://www.bmj.com/content/322/7282/0.7.full

From the paper:

"In contrast to findings in the general population, the suicide risk for patients admitted to hospital with a mental illness fell significantly with decreasing income (P=0.0001)...In the adjusted analyses, a similar but less pronounced pattern was found in people who had never been admitted to hospital with a psychiatric disorder."

http://www.bmj.com/content/322/7282/334.1.full

ramchip• 15 years ago

> there is some literature out there indicating increased income is associated with increased suicide risk.

As far as I can see, the study you cited does not support this. The quote mentions "In contrast to findings in the general population".

On the same page, a little further, it is written: "There is clear evidence from person based and ecological studies that relative poverty is associated with an increased risk of suicide." (with a couple citations)

kia• 15 years ago

I don't know about rich/poor suicide rates but in developed/developing countries the suicide rates are higher than in undeveloped world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...

mthoms• 15 years ago

Correlation does not equal causation.

From glancing at that chart, there also appear to be correlations with religion and distance from the equator (i.e. regions having more or less daily sunlight).

someone1• 15 years ago

Obviously this is a throwaway account for possibly obvious reason that I don't wish anyone in my life to know this... yada yada yah....

... anyway, I'd like to add to your comment about people killing themselves because they have mental health issues. Please note this isn't some attack on you and it isn't aimed solely at you it just happens that your comment raised was relevant.

It strikes me as odd(not really) that people think that just because you would dare do such a think that you must be mentally ill or be on drugs etc. That is sometimes not the case. I'd describe myself as generally happy and a nice person to be around(this is what I've actually been told) but to be honest I don't want to be here, I never have and can't wait to go. It's possibly hard for you and most people to understand but when you feel out of place often you just want to leave. To give you some context; I don't live luxurious life and I actually don't want one I often give-away most of the extra money I have but I still live comfortably. I love my job and the people I work with. I'm not the greatest communicator - it's not really a problem I just don't like interacting with people (I prefer to listen and observe). Yet I've always had close friends and is always popular with everyone everywhere I go(numerous schools, university, work).

By now you probably are guessing that the way I'd like the world to be (simple, happy and loving, etc.) isn't the way the world is, and that's very much the reason I don't want to be here. As I said I just don't feel like I belong here and I don't want to be here, if it were not for the fact that people would be hurt I'd be gone a long time ago.

In the past I've talked about my views of life in a discussion similar to this, I asked if that means I also and I also had a mental illness that was causing me to think like this and I was told that yes I do. But noone can tell me how or why that answer is a 'yes'.

Perhaps you can, provide a reason for a yes or no nswer, perhaps not but I'll ask away and see what happens.

With the facts given above, is it not possible that I'm just one of those people that see life differently from the norm. Do I have a mental illness? can you give a reason why you think I do(or don't)?

ntoshev• 15 years ago

Why do you care if you have mental illness or not? Either way, you have a bit different perspective on the world from everyone else, drugs could make you feel better, etc. Mental illness is just a label.

Try talking to your close friends about how the world is and how you'd like it to be (no need to get into details about leaving it). Maybe you'll find you can do something about it, albeit small.

gnosis• 15 years ago

"By now you probably are guessing that the way I'd like the world to be (simple, happy and loving, etc.) isn't the way the world is, and that's very much the reason I don't want to be here."

Maybe the reason the world isn't more like the one you want it to be is that not enough people like you are sticking around to try to make it better.

Another thing you might want to consider is dedicating your life to helping others. If you feel you have no use for your own life, at least you could use it to help others.

And this may help your own particular dilemma in another way. I've heard and read over and over again about how many people who were suicidal felt their lives had turned around once they switched to being self-focused to being other-focused.

someoneelse1• 15 years ago

Two things:

* There are countless examples of people who felt there was nothing more (to live for), but luckily lived on to see they were wrong. I've seen examples even here at HN.

* Visiting a doctor for mental illnesses should be equally obvious as visiting a doctor for other illnesses. Mental illnesses can be equally, possibly even more painful than other ilnessses, but I guess one of the problems is that they somehow feel right.

As with all my advice, if it helps, use it. If not, leave it. It might not be the best tought out piece of advice you'll get, but I once lost a good friend once because I didn't react in time, and now I think it's better to do what I cant rather than waiting for an inspired answer.

rdtsc2• 15 years ago

Thank you for sharing that.

I wonder if moving to another country would help? There are other cultures that don't put so much emphasis on extroversion and are just plain different that you might find that you fit better there.

You can always use the excuse that you don't speak the language to avoid interacting with people.

There is always the online world? Do you feel more comfortable there? Aside from work (and even there you can work remotely), there is online bill pay and other services where you can limit the number of interactions to the maximum.

In other words, why not try to mold your own world around you where you can feel better?

If you do make the choice to leave, there would be no way to undo it...

Don't worry too much about being labeled with a mental illness, as others mentioned, it is just a label. I think it is still beneficial to try ( and I know this is exactly part of the difficulty) to talk to a psychologist about stuff like this. You can just get a different perspective from them about things and you can tell them stuff you won't tell your friends or family.

sixtofour• 15 years ago

> As I said I just don't feel like I belong here and I don't want to be here

"It gets better."

jodrellblank4• 15 years ago

I asked if that means I also and I also had a mental illness that was causing me to think like this and I was told that yes I do. But noone can tell me how or why that answer is a 'yes'.

Not that you have a mental illness which causes you to think like this, but you habitually thinking like that and the thoughts which support it are the mental illness.

It's possibly hard for you and most people to understand but when you feel out of place often you just want to leave.

It possibly is hard for me to understand, but possibly not. I've dreamed of suicide for a good half my life and got close to it on occasion, never talked about it to anyone (and hence never been diagnosed with anything) and put a front over it. I would describe myself as depressed, but not out loud. I'm also a bit stubborn.

I've seen enough basics about zen and similar that I when I am angry I can notice a part of my head which isn't angry, which is just observing. I've recently stumbled on self help techniques which sound ridiculous and found that just by sitting and thinking in a particular way and counting backwards, fear carried for years since childhood faded like gas from a deflating balloon. A memory which was charged with negative emotion where the mere act of remembering it triggered physical feelings is now just a memory.

Nothing fun I've ever done changed that memory. I never even realised (until recently) that said memory of a trivial event was at all significant or relevant to anything at all, it was just a part of me which occasionally popped up and I tried to not think about it.

It's these things which keep me interested and hopeful. It's these experiences which make me think normal people have completely massively wrong beliefs about many things to do with habits and behaviour. (such as "other people's behaviour can make me feel bad", which is just completely endemic and so basically wrong it's been written about for thousands of years).

Such that when you say:

By now you probably are guessing that the way I'd like the world to be (simple, happy and loving, etc.) isn't the way the world is, and that's very much the reason I don't want to be here.

I say "I doubt it", and suspect you might not even be aware of the reason(s) you don't want to be here - what pattern is it that you learned, that you have stored in your head, that is driving the link between "not simple, happy, loving" and "don't belong, can't wait to leave"? Because not everyone has that link. So why do you have it? (and I also suspect that if you are "most people", you wont know what kind of answer to give to that question or that there could be more than one kind of answer and your brain might give you the less useful one by default).

If this sounds like I'm saying you should just "get over it", I am and I'm not. "get over it" implies you should steamroller through your problems and that is lame advice. I'm saying you should(?) try debugging yourself, and there's a fair chance it would be possible if you learned and practised ways to do it (and I likely don't know what).

Your want to escape and commit suicide is only "right" if you want to be running a program in your head which desires to leave and commit suicide. If you don't want that, it's a bug and should be debugged, not marked as a "feature" and left there. And you don't debug your head by earning lots, driving sports cars and chasing hedonic pursuits. You debug your head by looking at what your head does and trying as many things as you can think of (in your head) until you find something that changes its(your) behaviour.

With the facts given above, is it not possible that I'm just one of those people that see life differently from the norm.

JustIsADangerousWord. Do you want to be someone who sees life differently from the norm?

(Postscript for the detractors: Not a doctor, not your doctor, all IMO, yes I accept that not all things work for all people, yes I accept that some people have chemical imbalances. I don't accept that chemical imbalances are the cause of most people's day to day problems like fear of public speaking, social anxiety, fear of asking for a raise, feelings of insecurity, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of wanting to escape, feelings of loneliness, etc).

nkurz• 15 years ago

> Do I have a mental illness?

Yes, if you want to kill yourself you are "mentally ill". But as you are aware, mental illness is not defined by right and wrong, by rationality and irrationality, but rather by normality and abnormality. If you are unable to conform to societal norms without suicidal ideation, then with respect to society you are unquestionably "mentally ill". Michel Foucault's "Madness and Civilization" isn't exactly on point, but might be encouraging reading if you fear the label.

So "mental illness" isn't really the point. But are you right? About the world, probably. It is not the way you want it to be. It certainly doesn't seem simple, happy and loving to me. Is suicide the answer? It depends on the question. If the question is "Would killing yourself make the world more like you want it to be?", I'd have to think the answer is 'No.'. Beyond that, I confess to being stuck at about the same point you are.

Earnest Becker's "The Denial of Death" is an attempt to answer such questions honestly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

techiferous• 15 years ago

About fame: I consider being famous a curse. If you are a celebrity you have no privacy. You can't go to a restaurant without noticing the people whispering about you. At least that's how I would imagine it would be.

I think fame within your field is best. Take DHH, for example. He's got a great reputation as a programmer but he can still eat his lunch in peace.

staunch• 15 years ago

> Take DHH, for example. He's got a great reputation as a programmer but he can still eat his lunch in peace.

Oh really? http://37assets.s3.amazonaws.com/svn/newofficeshots/_3144012...

ekanes2• 15 years ago

Looks pretty peaceful. ;)

joshzayin• 15 years ago

The source poem the embedded song references (by Edwin Arlington Robinson): (\ns for stanza breaks)

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean-favoured and imperially slim.

(\n)

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good Morning!" and he glittered when he walked.

(\n)

And he was rich, yes, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine -- we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

(\n)

So on we worked and waited for the light,

And went without the meat and cursed the bread,

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet in his head.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

as fruitless as those dreams might be, they still give us hope

This is why I prefer befriending gorgeous women I could never date to avoiding them to save myself the longing.

When I was younger, I thought the success was the best part. Now I've come to feel the longing and dreaming of success to be all the sweeter.

richcollins• 15 years ago

Sure this has been posted here to death, but its apropos none the less: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoTmNU_5A0

sambeau• 15 years ago

I had never seen that so am thankful that you did.

flipside• 15 years ago

This is an example of the gap between what people think should make them happy and what actually will.

Once upon a time, I thought I could be happy if did the things that seemed to make others happy. When I realized I couldn't find happiness that way, I grew depressed because I had run out of excuses.

I'm lucky in that I eventually discovered a path to true happiness but I can appreciate the terror of reaching a dead end and losing all hope.

Moral of the story, do what makes you happy, not what you think should make you happy.

jodrellblank4• 15 years ago

I don't want to get into the habit of linking to my own comments, but I posted this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2082515 in the Bill Zeller suicide discussion and think it's related.

TL;DR: happiness is in your head. If you have money and still aren't happy, the next step is not "kill yourself" it is examine your head to work out how to be happy. If you dedicated years of your life to making money in order to be happy then it was misdirected effort, you should have spent the effort directly on happy. Working out how you can be happy and changing yourself so you can be, and are.

Biochemical/neural/medical disorders aside, that is.

btmorex• 15 years ago

TL;DR: happiness is in your head. If you have money and still aren't happy, the next step is not "kill yourself" it is examine your head to work out how to be happy. If you dedicated years of your life to making money in order to be happy then it was misdirected effort, you should have spent the effort directly on happy. Working out how you can be happy and changing yourself so you can be, and are.

In my experience, people kill themselves because they've already spent years or decades trying to find out how to be happy or even normal. Eventually, they give up hope and that is what leads to suicide.

megablast• 15 years ago

Is that true, or are people just trying to make themselves happy using the most obvious methods, ones that make other people happy, and it fails for them. It is not easy going against the grain, doing stuff that makes you happy that everybody else would laugh at.

jodrellblank4• 15 years ago

I accept that's what they would claim to be doing, but I don't accept that's what they were actually doing. Not really.

You know how some people start startups and spend their time registering a company and designing a logo and imagining features and so on? Because they think that's what starting a business is, what it should be? But that's not how to actually start a successful business, building something which people value and then getting people to use it is how to actually start a successful business.

jhamburger• 15 years ago

At this point in my life I would really hate to come into a large sum of money all at once, like from an inheritance or lottery. Not that I don't care about money, because I do- But for me most of the pleasure is in working towards goals, watching numbers in accounts grow new digits, gradually being able to afford more and better things.

I enjoy money the most in terms of 'keeping score' of your professional life, to suddenly be a multimillionaire would be like skipping past the whole game straight to polishing the trophy.

Snoddas• 15 years ago

Sounds selfish.

You'd rather work for a couple of decades and get your millions later than giving your family the best possible healthcare and education now. (And the possibility to work less to spend time with them)

Or perhaps you are just single with no wish of a family

ryanwaggoner• 15 years ago

This is how I feel as well, although if I'm honest with myself, I don't think I'd refuse that influx either. Fortunately, my relatives aren't wealthy and I don't pay the lottery, so I'm probably not at great risk of sudden undeserved wealth.

maeon3• 15 years ago

If you are thinking about this before you come into wealth then it sounds like you are the type of person to manage money well and use that wealth to create systems which not only edify your own life, but the lives of hundreds/thousands of others.

If only all lottery winners would ask these introspective questions before they won the lottery, they wouldn't all go broke and be miserable after 5 years.

jodrellblank4• 15 years ago

What about rich heiresses with everything in the world available to buy, who still feel unhappy? Perhaps they can't get themselves into satisfying romantic relationships. One way or another, they don't know how to use their money to create happiness - they lack the expertise in hedonic psychology and/or self-awareness and/or simple competence.

So they're constantly unhappy - and they blame it on existential angst, because they've already solved the only problem they know how to solve. They already have enough money and they've already bought all the toys. Clearly, if there's still a problem, it's because life is meaningless. [..] But, mostly, I suspect that when people complain about the empty meaningless void, it is because they have at least one problem that they aren't thinking about solving - perhaps because they never identified it.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/sc/existential_angst_factory/

lionhearted2• 15 years ago

I'd recommend everyone study a little biochemistry/neurochemistry. It's one of those areas where a little bit of knowledge can pay huge dividends.

After you learn a little bit, you start to think, "Duh, of course more external trappings don't keep jacking up your serotonin/dopamine/etc."

In fact, the more I learn of it, the more I reject pursuing "low happinesses" - biochemical mix-based - as any more important than respiration or circulation or immune system. Very important towards surviving, but as a health/pragmatic note, not a meaning of life. It's liberating dismissing biochemical happiness as a key goal, and freeing my mind to work on more interesting things.

zackattack2• 15 years ago

External trappings can easily keep jacking up your serotonin/dopamine.

lionhearted2• 15 years ago

From my understanding, not beyond a certain fairly low point where you max out.

GeneralMaximus• 15 years ago

Could you maybe leave a relevant link for the curious?

klbarry• 15 years ago

Is there a good beginner book for this? Of course I've read a great deal in the past regarding the minds working but never had anything in one place. It seems like it would be pretty useful.

bane• 15 years ago

Money can't buy happiness, but it sure can buy a close approximation.

Perhaps when we can no longer fantasize that our approximation isn't really fulfilling our needs, we realize that we've been leaving our needs unattended for too long. And it seems to far to reach back into our lives and fix those things, the easier path may just be "out".

ascuttlefish3• 15 years ago

I find it hard to believe that there's One Reason the rich and famous commit suicide. I think this essay reveals a fair bit more about the author and his take on richness and famousness than it does about the true motivations of the suicidal.

keefe2• 15 years ago

I think the various specific reasons can be generalized to the idea that money can buy happiness but it can't buy sanity.

ascuttlefish3• 15 years ago

Assuming of course that there are no specific reasons unrelated to money that could drive people to blackest despair. That a person is rich and famous is likely to be, in my humble and unexpert opinion, tangential to the problems that might make them suicidal. The tendency toward suicide is too complicated to generalize to a point about riches, I think.

The Reason The Rich & Famous Commit Suicide

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