40,000 suicides annually, yet America simply shrugs

http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/10/09/suicide-mental-health-prevention-research/15276353/

by robg • 12 years ago

89 109 12 years ago

ssprang• 12 years ago

Briggs saw the worst of this during suicide crises on the bridge when drivers passing by would yell out, "Go ahead and jump."

Despicable.

anigbrowl4• 12 years ago

Regrettably this behavior appears to be protected by the first amendment, unless suicide itself is made illegal (as it used to be in many jurisdictions). A law criminalizing such behavior in Minnesota was reversed at appeal: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2014/03/19/encouraging-suicide-isnt... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Francis_Melchert-Dinkel

I can't politely express my opinion about people like this.

Cthulhu_3• 12 years ago

To paraphrase a popular movie / meme, "You're not a criminal, you're just an asshole".

shasta• 12 years ago

Should they go kill themselves? Funny that the mental failings of the jumper evoke such sympathy and the mental failings of the "asshole" evoke such hatred.

npizzolato2• 12 years ago

Regrettably this behavior appears to be protected by the first amendment,

Good. Free speech is far too important to restrict based on the actions of a few assholes.

Fuxy• 12 years ago

People are dicks, they don't care.

You have to find the will and reason to live yourself if you really think life is that grim that you have to end it I have only one thing to say to you make sure you are 100% certain about that and there's no other way out of your situation before you do it this is one of the few things that cannot be undone.

There's almost certainly better options you can try before doing this.

unwind• 12 years ago

When visiting the US this summer, we walked across the Golden Gate (which at the time didn't have the "anti-suicide rails" that I believe are planned).

In several places there were both help phones and signs asking people to seek help, and also in one place there was graffiti on the pavement saying something like "somebody loves you". It was quite moving.

3fuff• 12 years ago

Even Atlas shrugged

bruceb• 12 years ago

"...the second-leading killer for those ages 15-34." I would have never guessed that.

Now I can understand why some are trying to use social media to detect who might be expressing feeling that are common with depression and suicidal thoughts.

imaginenore• 12 years ago

And these are mostly males.

Life for males really improves after 30. Girls starting to hit on you a lot more, better jobs, more money, less stress.

mqsiuser• 12 years ago

You are right, BUT sorry, this is unpopular on hacker news

Try to show that there is no difference between woman and men and you may get upvotes.

Edit: And hey: Life for femals is much better between 16 and 35 (and deteriorates quickly after that).

Man,... I know a lot of grumpy old woman.

mkr-hn• 12 years ago

I'm only interested in 3/4 of these, and they're not happening[1]. When does the magic spell activate?

[1] At least, not as fast as I'd like. Turns out we aren't all on the same path.

revdinosaur• 12 years ago

Interesting, is this true for males of all species or is it limited to human males?

gadders4• 12 years ago

I would expect the demographic to shift soon, due the momentum that assisted dying is getting.

thaumasiotes6• 12 years ago

The demographic of "people dying by suicide variously defined" may shift, but that won't have any effect on the leading causes of death for ages 15-34. It's a safe world out there now; young people generally don't die.

dmoo• 12 years ago

This is also a huge problem in Ireland with young males being most at risk. Its a complex problem with many factors but for sure. http://stopsuicide.ie/suicide-myths-and-facts/

cubancigar11• 12 years ago

It is all over the world. A large number of men are commuting suicide, mostly students and then married men. Yet if you look through pop media all you will see is how many women are 'attempting' suicide... :/

icegreentea• 12 years ago

Well really, what did you expect the second leading killer to be? They are literally in the prime of their lives. In general, they are as physically healthy as they will ever be. The leading 'killer' is the 'unintentional injury' category. Take a look at these charts (Canada and USA both included for comparison).

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10lcid_all_deaths_by_a...

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/lcd-pcd97/table1-eng.php

Suicide only 'drops in the rankings' because peoples start dying of other things.

gadders4• 12 years ago

I read an article once that said that when suicide was illegal in the UK, the rate was a lot lower.

I'm not sure if that was true or not, but as a thought experiment: if making suicide illegal lowered it's occurrance, would you support that?

alex_hitchins• 12 years ago

I believe when it was illegal here in the UK, coroners would look for ways to record the death in more favourable ways (mostly for the family). So an overdose would be recorded as death by misadventure and not suicide.

raverbashing• 12 years ago

Exactly this

This type of law is only good to make people misreport things.

Accidents/Misadventures/Suspected murder etc

ninguem22• 12 years ago

It is a terrible idea. What are the consequences? Punishment for those who attempt and fail or punishment for the families of those who succeed by denying them life insurance, proper burial and so on.

gadders4• 12 years ago

I think people who tried and failed may have been punished.

AFAIK, life insurance has never paid out for suicide and doesn't now.

npizzolato2• 12 years ago

I don't know how you would possibly go about making suicide illegal, but punishing those left behind sounds like the worst possible "solution" to suicide.

glandium• 12 years ago

I don't know if all countries that had such a law removed it, but in some countries, attempted suicide was a crime punished by death penalty.

tim333• 12 years ago

I think there should be a move towards targeting government policies that improve the numbers on measures like suicide and reported happiness. There are quite a lot of stats out there and they vary a lot from country to country - Wikipedia has Lithuania at 31 suicides per 100k per year, Greece at 3.5 and the UK and US in the middle somewhere around 12. You could try figuring what make the difference (perhaps with regression analysis?) and implementing policies to make it more like Greece and less like Lithuania perhaps.

tokenadult3• 12 years ago

One of the differences that jumps out at me about Lithuania and Greece is climate. I first learned about the importance of daylight for preventing depression (and thus suicide) from an Internet comment about twenty years ago when I wondered why Canada's rate of completed suicide is as high as it is, even though I would have guessed that its access to guns for young people might be a little less than in the United States. The answer, given to me by a Canadian scientist, is that Canada is nearer to the North Pole and farther from the Equator, and so it has a long winter season with little daylight.

In the old days, before United Nations statistics were on the World Wide Web, I actually went to a university library and looked up thick physical volumes of World Health Organisation statistics. The general relationship between polar latitude and high suicide rate, and equatorial latitude and lower suicide rate, holds up worldwide, with some exceptional-looking cases mostly explained by cloudiness. Low exposure to outdoor light is a suicide risk, and high exposure to cheery sunshine is a protective factor against suicide (but can lead to mania, known as "running amok" in some equatorial places). The author of the poem "Home on the Range" knew this: a place "Where seldom is heard a discouraging word / And the sky is not cloudy all day" like the Great Plains is protective against depression and suicide.

thaumasiotes6• 12 years ago

Each suicide costs society about $1 million in medical and lost-work expenses and emotionally victimizes an average of 10 other people.

So... the 10 other people emotionally victimized is an average figure, but the $1 million in medical costs isn't? How does finding a dead body rack up any medical expenses?

jimcsharp• 12 years ago

Medical and lost work. 10 people who may take days of leave, 10+ person days lost for funeral, 1 person a company needs to replace.

Cthulhu_3• 12 years ago

Depending on the method of suicide, clean-up. A popular way to go here in NL seems to be to jump in front of a train. Traumatized train personnel, a train full of people delayed for hours, loads of clean-up, etc. Jumping off the Golden Gate bridge seems to be relatively clean in comparison.

thaumasiotes6• 12 years ago

Taking a day of leave doesn't cause any lost-work expenses, under the standard system of "you get this much leave, and it doesn't roll over". If I take 15 days off in a year, the number of days I work is totally unaffected by whether one of the days off was spent at a funeral, or in some other way.

Say an unemployed 17-year-old kills himself and his funeral is held on a Sunday. I don't think that's a huge stretch, but it results in no days of leave, no work days lost to a funeral, and no sudden job opening needing to be filled.

And clean-up, like Cthulhu_ mentions, isn't a lost-work expense, it's an additional-work expense.

tokenadult3• 12 years ago

This is a very thoughtful article, which I see is part of a series from the same publication about suicide. There is good information here.

One paragraph jumped out at me: "Some states allow for court-ordered treatment plans. No studies have been done on whether this could prevent suicides, another example of gaps in knowledge, Caine says. Such ideas, he says, lie 'at the edge of what we know and what we don't know.'" Ugh, so even rather basic research on what might help hasn't been tried yet. We need to know more to do more.

The article also included some inspiring examples, including an Army officer who had come close to suicide himself about seven years ago during a combat deployment. "Today, he cannot recover from colon cancer diagnosed in 2012 that doctors declared terminal last year. In June, they said he had only months left. Faced with his own mortality, Fitch consulted his wife, Samantha Wolk, and reflected on the 22 veteran suicides occurring each day. He chose to devote his remaining time to prevent others from committing suicide.

"'I've always wanted to focus on trying to leave the world a better place,' he says."

Martin E. P. Seligman, in his book The Optimistic Child,[1] reviews some of the research current to about a decade ago about "self-esteem" programs in schools. They have long been known to be dangerous. The rising suicide rate compared to earlier birth cohorts in the United States suggests that young people in my generation and younger were not exposed in childhood to "optimism" as Seligman defines it but rather to "self-esteem" thinking, which doesn't leave people with enough inner strength to face a lot of challenges in life. Changing our thinking about what kind of thinking builds resilience in young people would help prevent suicide (and help everyone enjoy life better). There is already research on this, and we should apply it more.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Optimistic-Child-Depression-Resili...

zimpenfish2• 12 years ago

How much does the US spend on anti-terrorism activities[1] (which is, finger in the air, maybe 5000 people killed in 15 years?) compared to their mental health system (6500 people dead every -two months-)?

[1] It's about $40bn. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/factsheet_department_homeland/

pjc50• 12 years ago

The US spends a considerable number of lives on "anti-terrorism" combat, as well.

zimpenfish2• 12 years ago

An excellent adjunct-point.

bproctor• 12 years ago

I probably have an unpopular opinion on this, but I feel that people who wish to commit suicide should not be prevented from doing so. By all means, if someone wants to get help or needs counseling they should be able to get it. But if in the end their choice is suicide, we should be making it easier for them, not harder. I think that if I ever wanted to commit suicide I would be less likely to seek counseling out of fear I would be "prevented" from making my own choices. Similarly, when an animal is critically injured we "put them out of their misery" because that's the "humane" thing to do. But us humans, we have to suffer to the very end. Why?

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

You seem to be forgetting that for a lot of these people it wasn't really a choice. Their mind was malfunctioning and led them to do something they probably wouldn't have a few months later if they received the right help. Your argument about animals is more related to assisted dying/euthanasia which probably represents a very small number of these suicides and is a separate discussion I feel.

thaumasiotes6• 12 years ago

You seem to be forgetting that for a lot of these people it wasn't really a choice. Their mind was malfunctioning and led them to do something they probably wouldn't have a few months later

This argument proves a little too much.

jamestanderson• 12 years ago

But if your choices are because you suffer from a mental illness such as depression, should we as a society just "shrug" and say "Well, it's their choice, let them do whatever they want." ?

I don't think so - especially when a lot of times, due to their illness, they cannot make their own choice.

sgift• 12 years ago

The problem starts when you get into "is this a state of mind or an illness?" territory. I've heard the argument that people who have the wish to commit suicide are by definition mentally ill and should therefore be prevented from doing it even if we don't know which mental illness they suffer from.

ojbyrne• 12 years ago

If you're talking about people with terminal illnesses, then I completely agree. Otherwise, there needs to be a whole lot of counseling. Yes, its your decision, but everyone makes poor decisions, and this one is irreversible.

kachnuv_ocasek• 12 years ago

I think the point is that "we" should try to prevent them from wishing to commit suicide.

31reasons• 12 years ago

You need to educate yourself with the science of choice and what happens during depression that changes your ability to make right decisions. Assuming that a depressed person is able to make the right decision is just wrong. How many times did you decide on something and than changed your mind? only this one is irreversible. Depression is curable with right support and medication. There may be few who are hopeless cases but 40000 is a big number and I believe its preventable for good.

lmz7• 12 years ago

Abortion is also irreversible, yet discouraging women who want to abort their pregnancy from doing so is considered in bad taste by most liberals.

grimtrigger• 12 years ago

right decision

You're asserting that not only a right decision exists, but that you are more aware of the right decision than the person actually involved.

lhnz3• 12 years ago

Were you previously depressed yourself or are you just trotting out the party line?

I have been depressed before.

While it's true that some people can take medication and receive platitudes and coping methods on how to deal with the facts of a sad and sorry life, this won't "cure" everybody.

What about those people that suffer for 10+ years?

---

In regards to the typical statements that depressed people have to hear day-upon-day:

When I was depressed (and I was very depressed for around 5 years) I knew that based on what I saw around me, I could probably expect to stop becoming depressed at some point of my life. However, it greatly annoyed me when people said "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" because when you've felt particularly bad for years and years, you're not dealing with something which is so easy to change, and it's in fact far more permanent than many things in your life. Time stretches without pleasure. Days are long but years are unimaginably scary.

Another statement which I would hear a lot was the idea that you shouldn't kill yourself because your family, friends and community need you. It doesn't necessarily sounds nice to a depressed person. Here's how I used to rationalise it: I was committing a selfless act of martyrdom by continuing to exist without pleasure - every day I would be nailed to a cross and for their pleasure would hang there on a side of a hill they didn't care to visit. "What did they get out of my suffering?!"

Cthulhu_3• 12 years ago

I think you're confusing or equalizing suicide with euthanasia; the former is, in this case, a mental issue triggered by chemical inbalances (which in turn are often due to external causes), and as the people that have been through depression can attest to, a temporary one. Suicide in that case can be listed as a temporary lapse in judgment.

Euthanasia, on the other hand, is a conscious choice, often by the terminally ill and the suffering with no chance of recovery. Chronic physical pain and such, often to a point where the person is no longer able to commit suicide.

barry-cotter• 12 years ago

I loathe your condescension. If someone wants to die and they still want to die a month later, let them. By what right do we force those who want to die to suffer a little longer? If it's their life why can't they end it if they will?

You know what's not a terminal illness that is bad enough that many with it would welcome death? Schizophrenia. For some the medicine works, the side effects are acceptable, they can lead a normal life. But there are plenty who can't. You know what else isn't a terminal illness that would make you long for oblivion? Surviving when the rest of your family didn't, surviving when the accident was your fault.

And you know what, if you think your life isn't worth living and you want out, you are suffering.

I've been depressed, I've been very depressed indeed and I'm glad to have seen the back of it but there are plenty who spend years and decades there and if they want out they should be let go, not locked up "for their own safety"

xkcd-sucks• 12 years ago

I think you're confusing depression with temporary sadness. Depression is a terminal illness.

id• 12 years ago

I think that if I ever wanted to commit suicide I would be less likely to seek counseling out of fear I would be "prevented" from making my own choices.

If you already made your choice to commit suicide, you wouldn't seek counseling. But if you do, they won't do anything against your will unless you announce your suicide.

pfortuny• 12 years ago

You do not understand (or it seems so) that in most cases, the "decision" to commit suicide is not either a "free" or a "willing" decision.

There are cases where it is but, honestly, they are so few that legislating for them would be dishonest.

jkldotio• 12 years ago

I logged in just to downvote you as, extremely unfortunately, you are the top comment on this thread at the present moment. I don't think, for most cases in which it is not terminal, that you can say it's a case of physical suffering.

As someone has pointed out in another comment, a huge number of suicides come not from people who are terminally ill but from people who are just depressed. In those cases nothing you say in your comment actually applies. Those people are not "critically injured" they are just depressed, frequently they go on to live full and meaningful lives if they seek help.

lazyant• 12 years ago

Many people that have survived a suicide attempt (a guy jumping from the Golden Gate bridge is a well-known case) have regretted intermediately and go on to live a "normal" life.

ddorian43• 12 years ago

He said something similar to "when I jumped, I realized that every problem in my life was fixable, except the jump".

kbart• 12 years ago

In some corner cases (i.e. terminal illness, serious disability etc.) I would agree with you. But mostly suicidal behaviour and attempts are caused by temporary difficulties (mostly failed relationships, financial difficulties, loneliness) or mental conditions that can be treated - depression, addiction. I personally know quite a few people that would be gone by now if had been surrounded by people with your attitude and that lead normal life today.

mindcrime• 12 years ago

FWIW, I agree with the general sentiment of your comment. If somebody has truly decided that the suffering they are experiencing outweighs whatever joy they experience from life, and they want to get off this ride, then they absolutely have the right to do so.

Of course not everybody who thinks they want to die is being rational at the time, and I'm all for making treatment, counseling, etc. available... but speaking for myself, I know that if/when I ever decide that I want out, I don't want anybody presuming some authorization to interfere with me.

So yeah, put me in the "right to die" camp.

But us humans, we have to suffer to the very end. Why?

Because it's a cultural meme that "human life is sacrosanct and must be preserved at all cost" or whatever. It's really pretty silly when you think about it.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

I think it's important to recognize the difference between allowing someone to do something and striving to get someone to not do something, even if it's allowed.

practicalpants• 12 years ago

I agree that it ought to be a free choice if it's coming from a place of sanity, but our society really must further research and understanding of underlying causes of those suicides which could be classified as systemic to our culture, which looking at suicide rates around the world and historically is the majority of America's suicides. Some reasons for suicide are almost unavoidable (e.g. thinking of a recent NPR story about a mother who lost her children), yet many suicides are ultimately a product of our way of life, of what we are taught, of how we were raised, of how we form social groups, of the types of pressures we put on each other, of struggling to pay bills, of living here in the first world among gaping income disparity (I remember an article from a few years ago linking income disparity with suicide rates), etc.. I don't claim to know exactly how our culture creates suicides or how it could be changed, but it's got to be acknowledged as the source of a lot of depression and suicide and as an area that needs more serious thinking.

headShrinker• 12 years ago

Frankly, I'm surprized that this is seemingly the first mention of this...

"The Suicide Prevention Resource Center synthesized these studies and estimated that between 30 and 40% of LGBT youth, depending on age and sex groups, have attempted suicide."

Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBT_youth

I hope I just missed the reference somewhere in the piece or these comments.

tokenadult3• 12 years ago

I went to the website of the organization you mentioned. I browsed and then searched that website. A link there took me to another organization, the American Association of Suicidology, at first to a dead link, then I browsed and searched that organization's website, and found a fact sheet on the issue you bring up.[1] The fact sheet mentions some studies and their conclusions, without detailed citations or descriptions of methodology, and points out "Because no reliable data exists, we do not know whether LGBT youth die by suicide more frequently than their straight peers. Sexual orientation and gender identity data are not included on death certificates so aggregated national death data do not include this information. In addition, many LGBT youth do not disclose this information to family members and friends; as a result, sexual orientation and gender identity often do not show up in psychological autopsy interviews." In other words, we are not completely sure that LGBT status is a risk factor for completed suicide in the United States, although that is the current working hypothesis among many suicide researchers. As the article submitted to open the thread here today makes clear, there is a lot of basis research on suicide that still needs to be done.

[1] http://www.suicidology.org/Portals/14/docs/Resources/LGBT%20...

CapitalistCartr• 12 years ago

America is NOT doing nothing. America is not synonymous with the Federal gov't. We as a people do a lot outside of Federal gov't spending.

robbiep• 12 years ago

40,000 is an awfully large number but it is less than the number of gun deaths in the US (put at around 50-60,000 depending on the sources), which would be much easier to prevent

lmz7• 12 years ago

Most gun deaths in the US are suicides. [1]

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/05/24/suicides-acc...

kirsebaer2• 12 years ago

16,000 homicides total (firearm or otherwise) in the US in 2011.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

feld• 12 years ago

  Razors pain you;
  Rivers are damp;
  Acids stain you;
  And drugs cause cramp.
  Guns aren't lawful;
  Nooses give;
  Gas smells awful;
  You might as well live.
                  -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926

kirsebaer2• 12 years ago

One in a 100 people in the US will die by suicide. It's a common cause of death.

Could suicide and depression be a response to civilization and modernity? This article cites some evidence that the suicide rate was much lower among various groups of hunter-gatherers:

http://www.academia.edu/4777783/Suicide_Among_the_Mla_Bri_Hu...

s_baby• 12 years ago

America shrugs because suicide is a problem effecting men. Men outnumber women in suicide between 3:1 and 10:1[1]. If the tables were turned you better believe you would hear about it. The NFL would wear pink ribbons to raise awareness. You would constantly see articles relating patriarchy and female suicide. But these people killing themselves are men. These people are privileged and therefore are not being driven by controllable outside factors into suicide like some marginalized group. This is why I find the term privilege getting thrown around so offensive. The problem isn't that it lacks validity(it has some). The problem is we're trying to build an inclusive society and calling someone privileged is now a way to marginalize the needs and perspectives of others.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide

jczhang• 12 years ago

A month ago I was in San Diego and a homeless guy walking past me told me he was trying he kill himself and was looking for the path to the bridge. He kept walking, passing by a police officer. I told the police officer he might want to keep an eye on the guy and told him that he was trying to kill himself. The officer just said, "He should try harder." I was shocked.

40,000 suicides annually, yet America simply shrugs

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