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Suicide Rates Among Adolescents and Young Adults in the United States, 2000-2017
- charliesharding 7y agoAs we ditch the cultural foundation to our society in an effort to be more inclusive, we experience a crisis of meaning.
- theplague42 7y agoWhat cultural foundation?
- dasil003 7y agoYeah, without specifics it reads like the mostly thinly veiled of conservative dog whistles.
- Toine 7y agoProhibitions, moral values, virtues, religion, heritage, community, etc.
- Buldak 7y agoStricter norms and racial homogeneity don't seem to have prevented high suicide rates in countries like Korea or Japan. At any rate, it's awfully easy to diagnose broad cultural problems as the result of one's personal bugbears.
- ionised 7y agoAll the things that would make my life worse if served in the flavour that traditionalist conservatives would prefer.
- whatshisface 7y agoThere's a theory that circulates on 4chan and on the edges of "rationalist" blogs that having a conservative society that puts everyone in their place improves mental health by making most people feel like they have a place. Probably the least radical place this has been expressed is on Scott Aaronson's quantum computing blog, where he argues that some of the troubles he had in his youth would have been averted by the strict social traditions of the jewish shtetl. (That's why he named his blog "Shtetl Optimized.")
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- moftz 7y agoThere's literally hippy communes that operate this way. You don't need to be conservative to see the benefit of everyone having a place in society. This sounds a lot like public work programs like the Green New Deal is proposing, lots of high-paying opportunities for skilled labor and training to become a skilled laborer. There's lot of able people wasting their potential in call centers and retail jobs. Everyone wants manufacturing back in America but no one wants to pay for the costs of educating a new generation of tradesmen.
- whatshisface 7y ago>There's literally hippy communes that operate this way. You don't need to be conservative to see the benefit of everyone having a place in society. Although I recognize that most political words are used as euphemisms for Republicans and Democrat, by the dictionary definition of the word conservative, those hippy communes are pretty conservative. Imagine trying to get them to watch reality TV and eat Big Macs!
- ionised 7y agoConservatism has consistently been on the wrong side of every social issue in history, so I feel safe calling this 'theory' out as nothing more than teenage angst at a world they feel has left them behind.
- 0815test 7y ago> Conservatism has consistently been on the wrong side of every social issue in history Given that Progressivism was very much on the side of things like Soviet Russia, Maoist China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, as well as all sorts of "fun" stuff like racist eugenics in the U.S., I'll gladly take the "consistent" losses of conservatism over the know-it-all attitude of progressives, thanks you very much.
- 7y ago
- flatline 7y agoWhat cultural foundation? Racism? Misogyny? Because we’ve always been an inclusive, multi-cultural society, and the US has, at least over the last 75 years or so, been viewed as something of an anti-culture beyond its cultural elements imported from elsewhere.
- gbrown 7y ago[citation needed] There are many equally plausible assertions, like existential fear/despair over the various ecological and climactic disasters, increasing alienation as the nation and world move towards authoritarianism and nativism, unhealthy impacts of social media consumption etc... ... at least those are the things giving me anxiety and stress.
- qwsxyh 7y agoI envy those who are able to bring themselves to escape from this hell world.
- Toine 7y agoIt’s only the beginning.
- qwsxyh 7y agoYes; better to get out now.
- m23khan 7y agowould be awesome to overlap the data about suicide rates with levels of physical activity and social media involvement among the concerned age group during 2000-2017. Any type/form of exercising act as the detox for the mind's negative energy. Not saying this is the magic pill (I understand, depression is a real thing and needs to be treated) but I am sure exercising can help in some cases. Similarly, we are all too familiar with the negative impacts of social media.
- sambull 7y agoI'd expect to see a sharp increase. Hope is a key component to mental health, as hope erodes people will feel lost and sad. The very real crisis that many of us have start to feel will only get more pronounced as time goes on. Further resource constraints like less water, additional heat and bad news as people will have to move, causing local instabilities that balloon into regional or international conflict. The future for young adults is grim, where I live they compete with multinational banks to buy homes. Then end up renting from the same people. Like many other large issues in our country those entrenched in power have taken the 'it doesn't exist' approach to the current climate destruction. This further exacerbates hopelessness. It is not a very good situation to be in.
- nonwifehaver3 7y agoThis has some graphs showing the suicide rates for different age groups: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207007-us-suicide-rate-at-its-highest-since-the-end-of-the-second-world-war/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207007-us-suicide-rate... There is a clear curve upward in the 15-24 and to a lesser degree the 25-34 group starting in 2013. I don't think there was a big economic downswing at the time, so it could be other cultural or technological factors at play.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agotechnology & social media which lead people into isolation and despite promising the opposite, a less-connected live. meeting people today is much easier than it was 20 years ago (organized events on places like meetup.com, etc ... even tinder make it easy). But the quality of these connections is shallow and very short. also the more time we spend on social media the less time we have to work on real connections (which is massive effort). I'm not surprised by the high rates of 35+ age group as it is very difficult for people (and males in general) to form new meaningful long term bonds after setting down. Add the likelyhood of divorce, burnout or unemployment rates in those age groups it is no wonder. :(
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoPopular media conveys this conception that the Amish are opposed to technology for religious reasons, but this is incorrect. The Amish place a high value on maintaining their culture, and within that culture familial and community interactions are among the most important ideals. Consequently, each community takes a considered look at technology and how it might influence their culture, and simply choose not to adopt those that they believe would have a negative influence. I think there is something the rest of us could learn from this.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoSo where did zippers falls on the spectrum of "drive the community apart"?
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoIn that time, the US has waged the longest war in our history, average college debt has only increased, easily accessible good paying jobs have continued to vanish, health care costs have continued to skyrocket, the minimum wage has stayed pitifully low, and real estate investment firms are gobbling up housing in the places that do have jobs.
- yters 7y agoI don't see a rush of people leaving the US for greener pastures...
- luckylion 7y agoI believe you'd need to expect significantly better results elsewhere and/or an easy transition. For somebody with a well-paying job in the US, few other countries promise an equal or better future. For somebody that struggles in the US, transition to Europe for example isn't easy, and it's not like they could reasonably expect to make a lot more money there. Pretty much everybody from, say, Ghana, can expect to have a better life that is worth the transition in Denmark, but few Danes can expect to have a better life in Belgium that offsets the cost of moving, learning a new language and switching cultures. If European cultures were more similar to the US and there was no language barrier or bureaucratic difficulties, I'd expect more migration, similar to how people will look for greener pastures within their home country.
- bananocurrency 7y agothat's true! Why don't these youths just pick themselves up by their bootstraps, use all the capital they have clearly saved up, and just move?
- yters 7y agoCertainly, many past generations have done so, and we in the US are the product of such people.
- hestipod 7y ago
- gwbas1c 7y agoOver the last two decades I've seen a dramatic increase in stressful academics at schools: More homework, more intense classes, ect, ect. I went to a "college prep" high school that was harder than my college. As I became independent, I realized that intense academics stole my childhood and didn't have the value that the adults believe they have. At the same time, when I lived in Palo Alto, I used to hear about how one of the high schools, (Gunn?) had a very high suicide rate due to the stress of academics. Someone (Caltrans?) put fences around the train tracks to try and stop suicides. (I wish commenters wouldn't immediately blame social media.)
- codezero 7y agoThe fences and guards have absolutely helped. When I first started the commute we had something like 12-14 deaths one year. Since those fences went up it’s dropped dramatically.
- sametmax 7y agoIt helped the trains, not the kids.
- codezero 7y agoThat’s too bad. I hoped they added programs at the schools as well as guards. Did that not happen?
- forgottenpass 7y agoSchool anti-suicide (or any of their social intervention) programs mostly accomplish teaching the targeted groups to blend into the crowd and avoid attending the school's hamfisted intervention programs. But maybe that's the point.
- antisemiotic 7y agoI imagine it helped the train drivers a lot too.
- whatshisface 7y agoEveryone wants to jump on this with their personal theory of what's wrong with the world (because that's what bothers them), but suicide isn't based on rational negative beliefs like the ones we have. It is a symptom of mental illness, which has completely different causes.
- DanBC 7y ago> It is a symptom of mental illness, Not always. We know that economic downturn will always see an increase in deaths by suicide, without a similar increase in rates of diagnosis of mental illness.
- onemoresoop 7y ago>without a similar increase in rates of diagnosis of mental illness. This is a bit misleading, deaths by suicide can be quantified but the rates of diagnosis depend on people's and willingness and access to mental health resources.
- DanBC 7y agoFor this age group we need to get away from the idea of mental illness and focus on things like rapid onset despair. Another reason we need to move away from the idea of mental illness is that there's considerable stigma around mental ill health, and this is a barrier to help-seeking.
- onemoresoop 7y agoYes, the idea of mental illness can freak one out, there's a lot of stigma that comes with it initially. But once one learns that a lot of people have the same issues when they push past their limits things become easier to handle. It can even become a telling episode of how not to abuse oneself by accepting stressors that are not worth it.
- DanBC 7y ago
- ravenstine 7y agoYou can use sci-hub.shop to read the full text. Interestingly, the trend of suicide among females seems to be unaffected. The rate is steadily increasing, but the trend has been nearly the same since at least 2000. There's a noticeable increase in the suicide trend for males starting in 2013. (If I'm interpreting the graphs correctly)
- user17843 7y agoSince the media is all about feminist propaganda nowadays, this fact is not being mentioned in the headline. Although it is the most important part of the data. Why are men increasingly chosing to end their lifes? Could there be a relation between the growing dominance of anti-male 4. wave feminist viewpoints in society and propaganda in the media and this statistics? Coincidentally the fourth wave feminism started exactly one year before the increase in suicides.
- dang 7y ago"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- user17843 7y agoThe question of corellation between both aspects is definitely worth to be asked, and it's relevant.
- dang 7y agoIt's ideological battle, which the site guidelines explicitly ask you not to do on HN. Once someone starts going on about "feminist propaganda" or any other classic ideological flamewar topic, curiosity departs, the same way wild animals depart a forest fire. Please don't do that to the threads here.
- 7y ago
- daenz 7y agoLet's be honest here...in this social climate, who looks at a graph that essentially says "primarily young white men are killing themselves more" and thinks it's bad? Be honest, how much sympathy does that particular demographic get? My point is: do you think that kind of response (lack of sympathy) is having a positive or negative effect on the graph?
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoIt seemed to be important enough to cover in this news article, and then important enough for 50+ (as of this comment being made) comments to be made on hacker news about it.
- pjc50 7y agoDo you really think real people (rather than hyper-partisan internet trolls who may be sockpuppeting both sides) are sincerely cheering a rise in white male suicide?
- charliesharding 7y agoNot cheering the rise of white male suicide, but viewing it as a side effect of an important social shift which topples the historical dominance hierarchy
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoI think it might be orthogonal. The problem exists for everyone but is only visible in this demographic because it is balanced out in the others by improvements from recent social change.
- toejam69420 7y ago>What is 'strategy of tension' [0]? pcj50, I-I don't even... know. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
- jsnider3 7y ago
- DanBC 7y agoThe Lancet has some nice investigation around what might be causing increases in deaths by suicide in the UK in this age group: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)31102-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... The rate of death has increased in this agre group on both sides of the Atlantic.
- bluedino 7y agoAre they counting drug overdoses as suicides?
- DanBC 7y agoProbably not. Page 21 - https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/self-directed-violence-a.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/self-directed-vio... There are a huge number of drug-related deaths in the US, so if these were counted we'd expect to see huge rises in all ages.
- kradroy 7y agoTo any teens out there reading this: It's okay to be a failure or a loser. Don't listen to your parents', teachers' or peers' bullshit. Live the life that makes you happy.
- faissaloo 7y agoNo this isn't it at all, things are real bad right now, we need to take charge if we want a future and we should be preparing for the coming storm. Life is tough but we are tougher.
- codingdave 7y agoThere is no such thing as being a failure or a loser. Specific projects and efforts may fail. You may lose a specific contest. But that doesn't change you into a 'loser' or a 'failure'.
- jackschultz 7y agoI've always felt this fit into Gladwell's article from the New Yorker about gun violence: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-... The overview is that for gun violence, one act makes the next one slightly more likely. When people see someone perform an act, ones like shootings or suicides, others see it as somewhat more acceptable. Here's a relevant quote: > In the elegant theoretical model Granovetter proposed, riots were started by people with a threshold of zero—instigators willing to throw a rock through a window at the slightest provocation. Then comes the person who will throw a rock if someone else goes first. He has a threshold of one. Next in is the person with the threshold of two. His qualms are overcome when he sees the instigator and the instigator’s accomplice. Next to him is someone with a threshold of three, who would never break windows and loot stores unless there were three people right in front of him who were already doing that—and so on up to the hundredth person, a righteous upstanding citizen who nonetheless could set his beliefs aside and grab a camera from the broken window of the electronics store if everyone around him was grabbing cameras from the electronics store. Take out riots, and add suicides, and there's a match. I know people can have different opinions on Gladwell, but I feel this is a very well thought out writing about it, and in a way that isn't talked about. Here's a podcast episode where he talks about it too: https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/malcolm-gladwell-on-understanding-school-shooters https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/malcolm-gl...
- hristov 7y agoThere have been many articles on rising suicide rates especially among kids and young adults, but they tend to not mention a very important possible factor. And that is antidepressants. It is well known that antidepressants increase the risk of suicide for children, teenagers and young adults (i.e. people under 25). The FDA has acknowledged this and even put warnings on the drug packaging. Yet antidepressants are still routinely prescribed for children and teenagers. This is something the media does not like to talk about considering how pharma companies spend a lot of money on advertising. But it is a very important possible factor and it should be considered.
- jamesmp98 7y agoWhen I was 11 or 12 I was put on anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications (some off label). Several years later, it's discovered the company had illegally marketed one of the drugs to minors and it had developed into negative side effects in some patients, for which there was a class action lawsuit. Luckily, I never developed said side effects personally, but it did leave a level of distrust with pharma companies and to an extant the medical field
- onemoresoop 7y agoDo you think you got any benefit from the aforementioned medications? If you did then maybe it was luck that you did not incur the negative side effects and yes, any profit generating device is to be a a bit distrusted and treated with somewhat skepticism.
- jamesmp98 7y ago> any profit generating device is to be a a bit distrusted and treated with somewhat skepticism. Yes, but I feel that these days, at least on the internet, speaking with skepticism about medicine and pharma companies will have people equating you with anti-vaxxers, given the arguments are often similar
- ecocentrik 7y ago
- citilife 7y agoThis is paywalled, so there's very little information -- anyone have a link? Most of these comments don't appear to have read anything, just discussing....
- mullingitover 7y agoMy big-picture theory of this is anomie[1]: > The nineteenth century French pioneer sociologist Émile Durkheim borrowed the word from French philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau and used it in his influential book Suicide (1897), outlining the social (and not individual) causes of suicide, characterized by a rapid change of the standards or values of societies (often erroneously referred to as normlessness), and an associated feeling of alienation and purposelessness. He believed that anomie is common when the surrounding society has undergone significant changes in its economic fortunes, whether for better or for worse and, more generally, when there is a significant discrepancy between the ideological theories and values commonly professed and what was actually achievable in everyday life. This was contrary to previous theories on suicide which generally maintained that suicide was precipitated by negative events in a person's life and their subsequent depression. Just look at when this took off: right after 2008, when any notion that they'd be taken care of and their futures were secure was swept away. The adolescents who came of age during that event will probably spend the rest of their lives with lingering economic insecurity and fear about the future. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
- hestipod 7y agoThat's what really did it for me. Losing any notion of security or a future. Initially I thought losing my physical health was the worst of it, but the losses of relationship and financial (and thus physical) security were an order of magnitude worse.
- yters 7y agoI wonder if there is a correlation between the increase in suicide and decrease in religiosity. I'd imagine suicide is a much tougher sell if someone believes in an eternal hell for suicides, and an eternal heaven for those who hold onto hope.
- sampleinajar 7y agoIt seems to go even deeper than that. Though there are likely other factors missing from this broad observation. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/study-of-the-day-protestants-may-be-more-suicidal-than-catholics/254547/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/study-of-...
- yters 7y agoI'd say that's consistent with my claim. While the official Catholic teaching is suicide is a mortal sin and deserves hell, Protestantism has no official teaching on the matter. Plus, numerous Protestants believe they cannot lose their salvation regardless of what they do, in which case suicide is a quick ticket to heaven.
- everdrive 7y agoI was surprised to learn the suicide rates were so much higher before WWII. I suppose that's not too shocking given the events of the time, however I never see todays suicide rates noted in that context.
- biophysboy 7y agoWait, were they low during WWII? Or did they drop after?
- DanBC 7y agoThe highest risk group - men aged between 18 to 41 - were conscripted. It's likely that counting of deaths was disrupted by the war, and it was already inconsistent because of the criminality of suicide and the desire of coroners to "protect" the relatives from a highly stigmatising suicide verdict.
- armandososa 7y agoI am a voluntary youth minister at a local low-to-middle class church in Mexico so I have a lot of contact with adolescents (Which is unusual because I'm married, almost 40 and have no kids of my own). And what I've seen is that it has become cool or fashonable to be depressed, anxious and to have some mild mental disorder like TOC or ADHD. Kids "brag" about it on social media and sometimes discuss who is more miserable and make fun on people who are "wholesome" or "happy" as being shallow. They constantly make jokes about being worthless and wanting to die and being secretly sad (even when they are broadcasting it on the internet). I'm not saying that they are faking it, and I know their lives look significantly shittier than mine at their age and the future looks bleak for most, but I have a theory that when it becomes viral some people try to act depressed and end up being depressed for real. Like, when I was adolescent I knew a lot of girls with eating disorders (bulimia/anorexia) in my immediate circle (before social media) but I don't think I know anybody with those problems today, because having those issues became uncool, now you have others to pick from. So yes, what I'm trying to say is that I had paralyzing social anxiety before it was cool.
- everdrive 7y agoThanks for mentioning this. This has been the norm for at least 15-20 years. It wasn't until I was in college (early 2000s) that I realized popular and happy people weren't inherently bad. Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? And where did I get the idea suffering gave me validity? Who knows. What I do know is that this misconception was a big waste of time.
- mooseburger 7y ago> Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? They were the primary bullies growing up? That's where I got the idea, at least. And suffering seems like a more authentic emotion than happiness, as there are all sorts of heavy social incentives to constantly project happiness. There's a lot more people out there faking happiness, than there are faking suffering.
- throwaway876123 7y ago> Where did I get the idea that popular people were malevolent? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
- overcast 7y agohttps://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6630a6.htm Do these charts not coincide exactly with the introduction and pervasiveness of smart phones and social media? The rates were dropping until 2007 when the iPhone was introduced, and it only went up from there as more and more social apps rolled out.
- fwip 7y agoThere are a lot of things that correlate with other things. For example, the financial crisis started in 2007 too.
- overcast 7y agoWhy would adolescents care about the financial crisis?
- fwip 7y agoA) They might be directly affected. Maybe their family lost their house. B) Kids (and young adults) aren't stupid. They know they're not gonna be kids forever - and when the world is suddenly starting to suck more than you were told it would, it's normal to get kinda bummed about that.
- rolltiide 7y agoI'm starting to think that copy and pasting a suicide prevention phone number doesn't address the underlying issue
- gardncl 7y agoI attempted suicide at fifteen years old (~2009)--three schools, two countries, and dad had lost his job twice in just three years. I'd say for me it was entirely based on social isolation and lack of self worth. I hadn't been able to participate in any sports teams or academics like I wanted since I started over twice back-to-back (in different countries, even). Very hopeless time for me and didn't feel like our family was ever going to get out of that situation. Computers did not help me because I spent long hours on them in my room alone and if I didn't have them I likely would have found some group at school to fit in with.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoTL;DR: +30% increase in suicides in the United States from 2000 to 2016, with rates increasing in all age groups.
- WhompingWindows 7y agoThey feel pressure socially and academically; they look ahead in time and see inequality, climate change and automation; they look at their phones and see social media and its ills; they look around them and see others committing suicide, being addicted to something or other, or they just generally see a shitty society in the US today. Their politicians are old white men catering to old white folks and rural folks. They see the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars and the financial crisis, low wages, hollowed out Rust Belt...It's not hard to list many reasons why my peers have been lost to suicide in increasing numbers. I myself have lost a close friend from scouts. He was a complex person, orphan from another country adopted into affluent US family. Struggled to fit in, he was short and heavy, but he had a kind soul and loved to blacksmith, making swords and weaponry. He never quite succeeded with girls or social circles, but eventually he met a girl on WoW finally, moved across country for her, since he felt he had nothing else positive in his life. She married then divorced him within 2 years, and he killed himself soon after, feeling he had no other prospects and having no adequate treatments for his depression.
- mooseburger 7y agoMore fundamentally, it's a problem with secular society. Really, if the only goal of life is achieving material prosperity, and you're not achieving it, there's no particular reason not to kill yourself, other than holding on to hope, which is quite irrational in some circumstances.