7 ms·

Why suicide is falling around the world, and how to bring it down more

37 points by robg 8y ago

chris_wot 8y ago
They are wrong. Suicide rates in Australia rose in 2017.
- alangpierce 8y ago
  The article also mentions that suicide rates have gone up in the United States in recent years. It's not saying that every country has had a decreasing rate of suicides, it's saying that the global rate is going down.
malvosenior 8y ago
> The suicide rate in America is up by 18% since 2000. This is not merely a tragedy; it matters politically, too. The rise is largely among white, middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts. Their deaths are a symptom of troubles to which some see President Donald Trump as the answer. Those troubles should not be ignored. And yet they are ignored, time and time again. Even mentioning that men could have a problem that society could help solve will be met with great resistance. As we know, there's a never ending effort to get women into stem, to empower girls, to elevate women in society. Which can be good but it seems the pendulum has swung so far in that direction that men are now viewed as "the problem". It seems to me that technology is one of the last areas where men actually succeed but there's a great deal of effort put into place to remove that success. Women now outnumber men greatly in university. Is there a point where we collectively step back and acknowledge the great gains women have had in society; so great that they now have a very real advantage over men? In addition to suicide, men are imprisoned at a much higher level than women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St... This seems like a problem at least worth acknowledging.
- mjevans 8y ago
  I believe in zero discrimination and equal opportunity. If numbers in any thing aren't as might be desired by roughly equal outcomes than it's probably time to start looking at other issues. As a very broad brush, assuming a positive and not-toxic workplace, adequate compensation WITH a proper balance of work/life is probably the next wrong to look at. Multiple branching career paths that don't derail when taking time off for kids is probably another. However, in general, US (and western) society is bi-modal school/work/being "productive" on one path and kids on the other. It does an astoundingly poor job of building stable communities, particularly as for at least two generations "The American Dream" has been dying/dead.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  > Is there a point where we collectively step back and acknowledge the great gains women have had in society; so great that they now have a very real advantage over men? What evidence do you have to support this? Women are still underpaid compared to their male counterparts for doing the exact same work, which SCOTUS recently ruled was perfectly legal. Women are still underrepresented in managerial and executive roles across the Fortune 500 and beyond, and have only begun making real gains in high-level US gov positions. How exactly is the increasing rate of women in university contributing to the problem of poorly-educated white men committing suicide at a higher rate?
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    > What evidence do you have to support this? This article is about how male suicide is on the rise in the US. That is evidence. I also linked to male incarceration rates vs. female. > Women are still underpaid compared to their male counterparts for doing the exact same work This is simply not true and I challenge you to provide data to back up this assertion. https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-into-the-gender-pay-gap-myth https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy... > How exactly is the increasing rate of women in university contributing to the problem of poorly-educated white men committing suicide at a higher rate? Do you think they are totally unconnected? Is it not worth examining? Do you think male suicide and incarceration rates are even a problem worth looking into?
sharkjacobs 8y ago
> at a global level, suicide is down by 29% since 2000 > in America is up by 18% since 2000 ... The rise is largely among white, middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts > Because farming involves killing things, rural folk are likelier to have the means to kill themselves—guns, pesticides—to hand > Unemployed people kill themselves at around two-and-a-half times the rate of those in work > the most effective measure of all is limiting access to guns. Half of all Americans who commit suicide shoot themselves, and the overall rate in America is about twice that in Britain, which has strict gun controls. The difference in gun ownership largely accounts for the state-by-state variation in suicide rates Unlike the worldwide decline, the rise in America is linked to such a specific cultural subgroup that I'd love to know how the suicide rates compares between different populations within America
- jlongr 8y ago
  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/ Although that article is about gun deaths in general, at the end you can explore the data choosing suicide as the gun death category and comparing the different demographics.
- b1r6 8y ago
  Britain sounds like a dystopia where I can't find a tool to kill myself. Remember Bender and the suicide booths? If you're going to take the guns, please provide some of those.
mjevans 8y ago
The statistic about bridge jump survivors seems improperly researched. It ignores the literal survivor bias as well as the fact that survivors probably had access to many things that they didn't before the jump. * A memory of how painful and fearful they were while in the act. * Actual medical treatment and resources. * Awareness in those they know and work with. * Maybe, a more stable place in their community. It would be FAR more illustrative to contrast the 94% of survivors that persisted against the 6% who took another path. That would provide an extremely strong retrospective view about effective means of preventing "remission" and, quite plausibly, initial incidence.
darren0 8y ago
This article is just an opinion piece and junk at that. If they have any data they fail to properly cite it beyond their own economist article which also fails to properly cite sources. I find this so frustrating when reading articles these days. All to often they just write "in a recent study ..." with no mention of what the study is, who did it, or a link for you to read it. Suicide is a huge problem and very complex topic and this article answers to "Why" are quite flippant.
- jameskegel 8y ago
  If this comment gets any more grey I should probably leave HN because all logic is gone, and we are just voting based on emotions now. Folks let’s get back back on tech and leave the politics to those with time for unproductive discussion.
  - grzm 8y ago
    Submit articles you think are appropriate. Flag those you think are inappropriate for the site. Act within the guidelines by not complaining about those that you think aren't right for discussion on HN. > "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did." Similarly, "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I suspect the downvotes for your parent are in response to them thinking the comment isn't in line with the guidelines. Commenting as they did often attracts attention to the comment and leads to worse discussion.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
kartan 8y ago
"more curbs on the means of self-destruction" This means guns. And that is why right now this post is full of mean spirited comments. It is a shame that cannot be a sincere discussion about guns even when it relates to suicide and the lives it could save.
- 13of40 8y ago
  I was looking at numbers published by my state recently, and while suicide is the major cause of gun death (by a factor of about 5, IIRC) it was heavily skewed toward older (>50) rural males. What if those people are killing themselves for reasons like bankruptcy, divorce, inability to pay for medical care, etc, rather than temporary teen angst like everyone seems to assume?
- jessewmc 8y ago
  Even if you're pro gun control, it doesn't mean gun control reduces suicides. You'd have to look at the numbers -- are suicide rates lower in places with less access to guns? Or do people just commit suicide differently? I strongly suspect the latter. Removing means doesn't fix the underlying problems, and it smacks of agenda pushing to suggest otherwise (even if it's a good agenda).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - alangpierce 8y ago
    My understanding is that it's generally accepted among people researching these things that means restriction (like gun control) does reduce overall suicide rates, it doesn't just make people pick a different method of suicide. From a quick google search https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726520 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726520 > Although some individuals might seek other methods, many do not; when they do, the means chosen are less lethal and are associated with fewer deaths than when more dangerous ones are available.
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    People do look at these sorts of numbers all the time, and most of the evidence points to lower overall suicide rates in places that have stricter gun control. Of course, it is hard to fully control for all the correlations, but the available evidence does point towards fewer guns == fewer suicides. The general explanation is that many suicides are somewhat spur of the moment, and access to an easy way to kill yourself when you have those moments of weakness increases the chance that a person will follow through. People have this sense that suicides are well thought out decisions that people make when they conclude that their life isn't worth living anymore, but that isn't the case most of the time. https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplementary/firearm-availability-suicide.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplement... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-firearms-suicides/strict-state-gun-laws-linked-to-fewer-suicides-and-murders-idUSKBN1GH39W https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-firearms-suicides/...
AngryData 8y ago
I don't get how they go from saying poor rural folk that struggle to survive commit suicide more often and then conclude from it that gun control is a solution to that problem. That isn't treating the source of the problem at all. Guns didn't make these people poor and desperate. I would expect any marginalized and poor group of people to have higher rates of suicide than normal regardless of their access to dangerous tools or chemicals.
- shawn 8y ago
  Prozac. It works. Most rural folk don’t necessarily have access to quality health care. (I was one of those rural folk at one time.) People say work out, it will cure all of your problems. That may be true. But it wasn’t until I took Prozac every day for a solid month that I noticed a real improvement. Now I’m in a position where working out is a possibility, whereas it wasn’t before. I’m not saying it’s a miracle pill or that it will work for everybody or that it won’t cause problems. I don’t know any of those things. All I know is that it was a miracle pill for me and doesn’t seem to cause any problems. It’s like wearing a prosthetic leg. You don’t really realize how much of a struggle you’ve been dealing with until you put it on. The trick is that you have to wear it every day for a month before it works at all.
- jackvalentine 8y ago
  Successful suicide is a function of desire and access to means. You can work on either, or both at the same time.
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    Desire and access to means are not orthogonal. As desire increases, effective access to means increases. Anything can become a weapon if you're desperate enough.
    - jackvalentine 8y ago
      That’s true. But it’s also true that people with access to more effective methods are successful more often.
aligshow 8y ago
suicide should be increased, suicide = freedom and that means more suicide means more freedom
jahaja 8y ago
Thinking about the Bertrand Russell quote: "Drunkenness is temporary suicide", and wondering about the correlation between ~70k drug related deaths per year and this topics ~40k suicides per year. Would suicides increase if the easy access to palliatives would be stopped? Or would they decrease because it may be the drugs themselves that drags people down? I assume that the latter happens, but it seems to me that there's a root cause there before the heavy drugs exacerbates it.

37 points by robg 8y ago

chris_wot 8y ago

They are wrong. Suicide rates in Australia rose in 2017.

alangpierce 8y ago
The article also mentions that suicide rates have gone up in the United States in recent years. It's not saying that every country has had a decreasing rate of suicides, it's saying that the global rate is going down.

malvosenior 8y ago

> The suicide rate in America is up by 18% since 2000. This is not merely a tragedy; it matters politically, too. The rise is largely among white, middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts. Their deaths are a symptom of troubles to which some see President Donald Trump as the answer. Those troubles should not be ignored. And yet they are ignored, time and time again. Even mentioning that men could have a problem that society could help solve will be met with great resistance. As we know, there's a never ending effort to get women into stem, to empower girls, to elevate women in society. Which can be good but it seems the pendulum has swung so far in that direction that men are now viewed as "the problem". It seems to me that technology is one of the last areas where men actually succeed but there's a great deal of effort put into place to remove that success. Women now outnumber men greatly in university. Is there a point where we collectively step back and acknowledge the great gains women have had in society; so great that they now have a very real advantage over men? In addition to suicide, men are imprisoned at a much higher level than women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St... This seems like a problem at least worth acknowledging.

mjevans 8y ago
I believe in zero discrimination and equal opportunity. If numbers in any thing aren't as might be desired by roughly equal outcomes than it's probably time to start looking at other issues. As a very broad brush, assuming a positive and not-toxic workplace, adequate compensation WITH a proper balance of work/life is probably the next wrong to look at. Multiple branching career paths that don't derail when taking time off for kids is probably another. However, in general, US (and western) society is bi-modal school/work/being "productive" on one path and kids on the other. It does an astoundingly poor job of building stable communities, particularly as for at least two generations "The American Dream" has been dying/dead.
save_ferris 8y ago
> Is there a point where we collectively step back and acknowledge the great gains women have had in society; so great that they now have a very real advantage over men? What evidence do you have to support this? Women are still underpaid compared to their male counterparts for doing the exact same work, which SCOTUS recently ruled was perfectly legal. Women are still underrepresented in managerial and executive roles across the Fortune 500 and beyond, and have only begun making real gains in high-level US gov positions. How exactly is the increasing rate of women in university contributing to the problem of poorly-educated white men committing suicide at a higher rate?
- malvosenior 8y ago
  > What evidence do you have to support this? This article is about how male suicide is on the rise in the US. That is evidence. I also linked to male incarceration rates vs. female. > Women are still underpaid compared to their male counterparts for doing the exact same work This is simply not true and I challenge you to provide data to back up this assertion. https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-into-the-gender-pay-gap-myth https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy... > How exactly is the increasing rate of women in university contributing to the problem of poorly-educated white men committing suicide at a higher rate? Do you think they are totally unconnected? Is it not worth examining? Do you think male suicide and incarceration rates are even a problem worth looking into?

sharkjacobs 8y ago

> at a global level, suicide is down by 29% since 2000 > in America is up by 18% since 2000 ... The rise is largely among white, middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts > Because farming involves killing things, rural folk are likelier to have the means to kill themselves—guns, pesticides—to hand > Unemployed people kill themselves at around two-and-a-half times the rate of those in work > the most effective measure of all is limiting access to guns. Half of all Americans who commit suicide shoot themselves, and the overall rate in America is about twice that in Britain, which has strict gun controls. The difference in gun ownership largely accounts for the state-by-state variation in suicide rates Unlike the worldwide decline, the rise in America is linked to such a specific cultural subgroup that I'd love to know how the suicide rates compares between different populations within America

jlongr 8y ago
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/ Although that article is about gun deaths in general, at the end you can explore the data choosing suicide as the gun death category and comparing the different demographics.
b1r6 8y ago
Britain sounds like a dystopia where I can't find a tool to kill myself. Remember Bender and the suicide booths? If you're going to take the guns, please provide some of those.

mjevans 8y ago

The statistic about bridge jump survivors seems improperly researched. It ignores the literal survivor bias as well as the fact that survivors probably had access to many things that they didn't before the jump. * A memory of how painful and fearful they were while in the act. * Actual medical treatment and resources. * Awareness in those they know and work with. * Maybe, a more stable place in their community. It would be FAR more illustrative to contrast the 94% of survivors that persisted against the 6% who took another path. That would provide an extremely strong retrospective view about effective means of preventing "remission" and, quite plausibly, initial incidence.

darren0 8y ago

This article is just an opinion piece and junk at that. If they have any data they fail to properly cite it beyond their own economist article which also fails to properly cite sources. I find this so frustrating when reading articles these days. All to often they just write "in a recent study ..." with no mention of what the study is, who did it, or a link for you to read it. Suicide is a huge problem and very complex topic and this article answers to "Why" are quite flippant.

jameskegel 8y ago
If this comment gets any more grey I should probably leave HN because all logic is gone, and we are just voting based on emotions now. Folks let’s get back back on tech and leave the politics to those with time for unproductive discussion.
- grzm 8y ago
  Submit articles you think are appropriate. Flag those you think are inappropriate for the site. Act within the guidelines by not complaining about those that you think aren't right for discussion on HN. > "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did." Similarly, "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." I suspect the downvotes for your parent are in response to them thinking the comment isn't in line with the guidelines. Commenting as they did often attracts attention to the comment and leads to worse discussion.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

kartan 8y ago

"more curbs on the means of self-destruction" This means guns. And that is why right now this post is full of mean spirited comments. It is a shame that cannot be a sincere discussion about guns even when it relates to suicide and the lives it could save.

13of40 8y ago
I was looking at numbers published by my state recently, and while suicide is the major cause of gun death (by a factor of about 5, IIRC) it was heavily skewed toward older (>50) rural males. What if those people are killing themselves for reasons like bankruptcy, divorce, inability to pay for medical care, etc, rather than temporary teen angst like everyone seems to assume?
jessewmc 8y ago
Even if you're pro gun control, it doesn't mean gun control reduces suicides. You'd have to look at the numbers -- are suicide rates lower in places with less access to guns? Or do people just commit suicide differently? I strongly suspect the latter. Removing means doesn't fix the underlying problems, and it smacks of agenda pushing to suggest otherwise (even if it's a good agenda).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- alangpierce 8y ago
  My understanding is that it's generally accepted among people researching these things that means restriction (like gun control) does reduce overall suicide rates, it doesn't just make people pick a different method of suicide. From a quick google search https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726520 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22726520 > Although some individuals might seek other methods, many do not; when they do, the means chosen are less lethal and are associated with fewer deaths than when more dangerous ones are available.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  People do look at these sorts of numbers all the time, and most of the evidence points to lower overall suicide rates in places that have stricter gun control. Of course, it is hard to fully control for all the correlations, but the available evidence does point towards fewer guns == fewer suicides. The general explanation is that many suicides are somewhat spur of the moment, and access to an easy way to kill yourself when you have those moments of weakness increases the chance that a person will follow through. People have this sense that suicides are well thought out decisions that people make when they conclude that their life isn't worth living anymore, but that isn't the case most of the time. https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplementary/firearm-availability-suicide.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/supplement... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-firearms-suicides/strict-state-gun-laws-linked-to-fewer-suicides-and-murders-idUSKBN1GH39W https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-firearms-suicides/...

AngryData 8y ago

I don't get how they go from saying poor rural folk that struggle to survive commit suicide more often and then conclude from it that gun control is a solution to that problem. That isn't treating the source of the problem at all. Guns didn't make these people poor and desperate. I would expect any marginalized and poor group of people to have higher rates of suicide than normal regardless of their access to dangerous tools or chemicals.

shawn 8y ago
Prozac. It works. Most rural folk don’t necessarily have access to quality health care. (I was one of those rural folk at one time.) People say work out, it will cure all of your problems. That may be true. But it wasn’t until I took Prozac every day for a solid month that I noticed a real improvement. Now I’m in a position where working out is a possibility, whereas it wasn’t before. I’m not saying it’s a miracle pill or that it will work for everybody or that it won’t cause problems. I don’t know any of those things. All I know is that it was a miracle pill for me and doesn’t seem to cause any problems. It’s like wearing a prosthetic leg. You don’t really realize how much of a struggle you’ve been dealing with until you put it on. The trick is that you have to wear it every day for a month before it works at all.
jackvalentine 8y ago
Successful suicide is a function of desire and access to means. You can work on either, or both at the same time.
- anonytrary 8y ago
  Desire and access to means are not orthogonal. As desire increases, effective access to means increases. Anything can become a weapon if you're desperate enough.
  - jackvalentine 8y ago
    That’s true. But it’s also true that people with access to more effective methods are successful more often.

aligshow 8y ago

suicide should be increased, suicide = freedom and that means more suicide means more freedom

jahaja 8y ago

Thinking about the Bertrand Russell quote: "Drunkenness is temporary suicide", and wondering about the correlation between ~70k drug related deaths per year and this topics ~40k suicides per year. Would suicides increase if the easy access to palliatives would be stopped? Or would they decrease because it may be the drugs themselves that drags people down? I assume that the latter happens, but it seems to me that there's a root cause there before the heavy drugs exacerbates it.