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It doesn't say until a few paragraphs in that the study only covers the early months of the pandemic, and it's pretty misleading to focus only on succesful suic

• whimsicalism 6y ago
  How should I view a falling rate of suicide but rising rate of suicide attempts? I am not sure that it is misleading, but agree it isn't the full picture. Naturally, I think the primary focus should be on decreasing successful suicide attempts, then on decreasing suicide attempts writ large.
  • hn8788 6y ago
    Personally, I would lump suicide attempts and succesful suicides together in cases like this. I don't think it matters whether or not they succeed, just the fact that things are bad enough that they're suicidal means the pandemic was handled poorly. I don't know if the data is available, but increased attempts with a decrease in successes could be because people were stuck at home where someone could find them before it was too late.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      I think it definitely matters whether they succeed or not, not much more to say on that other than I disagree and your approach misses important policy changes that could dramatically reduce suicide by reducing the deadliness of attempts (failed attempts make it less likely you will try again). I don't think an increase in suicides a priori means the pandemic is handled poorly if it is the best we could do while stopping the 600k virus deaths from becoming 1.2 mill or whatever.
      • sokoloff 6y ago
        It matters in one obvious substantive way, but there's a valid philosophical question as to whether person A who was depressed enough to attempt and fail at suicide is better or worse off than person B who successfully completed the act. Person A is very likely still depressed and in mental pain. Person B is not. Now, if person A "recovers" and goes on to experience many good years of life, maybe then they're better off, but right now, they may believe that they are worse off than person B.
        • whimsicalism 6y ago
          I am on my phone so don't have the evidence with me right now, but from what I've read, most suicide decisions are relatively spur of the moment, come during a deep depressive moment, and are not necessarily characteristic of the person's broader life or emotional outlook. There is certainly a question, I merely find myself falling pretty heavily on one side of that question, and I think that is generally the side that people would fall on if it were put up to a vote. Dying from suicide worse than surviving suicide.
    • phkahler 6y ago
      >> Personally, I would lump suicide attempts and succesful suicides together in cases like this. I wouldn't, those are vastly different outcomes. I would like a separate stat that lumps suicides and overdoses (and maybe deaths from alcoholism) together. They are all sort of death from despair, and it's hard to say weather an O.D. was deliberate or not.
      • hn8788 6y ago
        They're vastly different outcomes, but the article is speculating that giving people stimulus checks is why they didn't kill themselves, while ignoring the increased attempts. From a policy making standpoint, I don't think it should matter if someone cuts their wrists and bleeds to death, or cuts their wrists and is taken to an ER and saved. It seems like it would be more effective to focus on making people not want to kill themselves in the first place than trying to reduce how often they're succesful.
  • moate 6y ago
    >>How should I view a falling rate of suicide but rising rate of suicide attempts? Badly. People dying to suicide is not good, but like any cause of death, it's going to happen. I think the bigger picture of overall degradation in mental health is a worse indicator than the deaths of people's quality of life. Personally I think you address the overall underlying issues, which would lead to lower death rates. If we heard that deaths from car accidents was down but the number of accidents was way up, we'd want to do something to address it because clearly there's a problem.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      > If we heard that deaths from car accidents was down but the number of accidents was way up, we'd want to do something to address it because clearly there's a problem. Yes, but it would be much better than the flip side scenario of way more people dying but fewer accidents, no? Indeed, I would argue it's better than the same number of people dying as before and the same number of accidents.
      • moate 6y ago
        If "number of dead people" is the only metric we care about, yes, you're 100% right. But that's not the only thing that matters. I don't want to keep going down the car rabbit hole, so to bring it back to suicide: increased rates of mental distress (as indicated by higher incidences of suicidal ideation) is very bad. This would likely mean several other things which are damaging to both the individuals and society (loss of income, additional expenses from medical treatment, possible run ins with criminal or psychological incarceration) As with most things, there's no "magic metric" when it comes to mental health relating to suicide that we could say "if we can get this down to 0 everything is fixed".
      • Hiopl 6y ago
        I'm glad I don't matter to you as long as I haven't yet killed myself. I'll try to keep that in mind while I'm dying inside and dealing with severe depression.
  • pmiller2 6y ago
    Clearly, fewer people are succeeding at killing themselves than they were before. Exactly why would be a good research question, but, one could speculate that being at home all the time might have something to do with it. Maybe people are being found before they die at a higher rate than before? Who knows.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      Yes, this definitely has something to do with it. Perhaps also an increase in the mix of suicide attempts that are unlikely to be successful, for instance, perhaps more women attempting suicide due to IPV, and generally women who attempt suicide are less likely to die.
• vlovich123 6y ago
  > and child abuse were significantly higher in 2020 Speaking as someone who heard testimonials of what it's like to WFH with kids, this part doesn't surprise me as much. On a more serious note, I wonder what the mix was of existing abusers just having more contact with the child vs additional stressors causing the abuse (& whether there was abuse that started as a result of the stress).