7 ms·

Why didn't suicides rise during Covid?

50 points by salonium_ 5y ago

sadmann1 5y ago
Well personally I didn't kill myself because I finally got around 6 hours of free time from the lack of commute and pointless face to face talk at work
sunshineforever 5y ago
I don't think that life became more depressing during covid. People spent more time with their families. The government literally handed out free money to everyone. A moratorium was placed on evictions. For a lot of poorer people, this was a weird, but not necessary bad year.
- wellthisishn 5y ago
  The article also isn't considering that a number of suicides would have been reported as Covid deaths
  - stkdump 5y ago
    I don't think that is the case.
    - panny 5y ago
      The article however does mention, >I’m tempted to wonder if people are misclassifying suicides as overdoses Which would not surprise me in the least given the data is coming from CDC. Everyone from all sides seem to agree that CDC lost lots of credibility with coronavirus.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        If suicides via (intentional) overdose went up, but not by other methods, i think that would raise even more questions of why only 1 method went up.
  - DanBC 5y ago
    That's not how suicide statistics work.
  - gruez 5y ago
    "This guy fell off a bridge.... probably caused by covid"
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  I don’t blame you for this, but this is a bit of a narrow view in my opinion. There are lots of people that lost their jobs (eg in retail) and now face a total crisis because not only are they out of work, but the entire sector that they worked in has imploded and will never be the same again. At least in the UK, government support was not enough to replace full-time incomes, so those living month to month would have had a very tough time on a reduced income. I know of lots of well paid people who were happily furloughed and took “free money”, and others who carried on working, with arguably better working conditions (from home, no committing, lower costs) But for many people in lower paid jobs and with lower incomes I’m sure the situation has been very depressing at times. Not to mention those who I’ve been very ill or lost loved ones. I have had a very positive COVID experience. Really all of the benefits and none of the downsides (so far). I expected many on HN will be the same. Most of us can comfortably work from home, many already did, and we are (on average) a well paid group. But I’ve also felt incredibly guilty at times at how “happy” I’ve been at various points during lockdown, while knowing full well that many others are having the exact opposite experience.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Life became incredibly more depressing for me during covid. Still, I don't think it will result in an increased number of suicides - because there is hope that things will be over soon. When things reopen and the economy collapse / the recession hits / the bubble burst, I think we'll see more suicides.
sldksk 5y ago
This is easy to explain. ‘Death of despair’-related suicides, which are the kind that have been rising in most developed countries for the past few decades, are overwhelmingly a matter of people feeling stagnant or hopeless in their socioeconomic circumstances. Note drug-related issues are very often, if not usually, downstream from those socioeconomic issues. And the answer is: when the rest of society slows down, suddenly those who couldn’t keep up don’t feel so behind. The only reason this comes as a surprise to so many people is that capitalism suggests that all progress is inherently good with no contingencies, or it draws a binary between progress and regression. Associated with that is American hyper-individualism. Ask a Marxist, for example, and they will offer an understanding of society which centers those who reproduce it, and along with that a sophisticated interest in theories of alienation and the role alienation plays in a person’s relations to their society. For a Marxist, these statistics would have been expected.
- QuixoticQuibit 5y ago
  > And the answer is: when the rest of society slows down, suddenly those who couldn’t keep up don’t feel so behind. Well said. This goes beyond even the socioeconomic causes of suicide that you mentioned and surely includes people with depression, (social) anxiety disorders, etc.
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    As an anecdotal data point, I have social anxiety, and depression diagnosed and I have been feeling relieved by the whole thing. Going to office etc, left me with constant worries and thought cycles, energy spent on analysing and overthinking social situations. Now there's just video calls/chat messages I have to worry about and there's fewer attack vectors for worries there. Same with random/events parties happening, even with friends I never felt very comfortable attending. Now I always had the perfect excuse to just stay at home.
- wildpeaks 5y ago
  > when the rest of society slows down, suddenly those who couldn’t keep up don’t feel so behind. Exactly, and I'd expect them to rise once things go back to "normal" because those who were already in a bad situation before Covid will rightfully feel left behind once more.
mewpmewp2 5y ago
From my own anecdotal perspective, I have a depression/anxiety diagnosis, and may have at times had suicidal thoughts, but I would have never really acted on them. For me, life got easier and less stress free, mainly because I don't ever have to go outside and I got to work from home, which pretty much solved the "social anxiety" issue for me. I never felt comfortable at office and felt always stressed. So I've been happy and relieved about being locked in. Whether it's good in the long term, I'm not sure however, because I will get even less experience putting myself out there.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  While recognising the possible “long term” challenge of not putting yourself out there, are you going to be able to sustain some of this new way of working post-COVID? (Ie primarily working from home). It seems like it’s good for you. I found a similar experience. Working from home is VERY good for my mental health. My anxiety almost disappeared completely at times. My dilemma is similar to yours. I have the ability to work from home forever now and never attend another in-person meeting again (became self-employed during COVID). However, like you, I recognise that I’ll need to ensure I don’t become a complete recluse and never leave the apartment! :)
  - robflynn 5y ago
    I have depression and anxiety and the pandemic ended up helping me a lot. Yeah, the isolation sucked, but it did help my anxiety a bit when I stayed to myself. During that time of reduced anxiety, I was able to introspect a bit more without external stressors and was able to identify some trauma that led to the depression and anxiety -- something that I wasn't even aware was affecting me. I really don't know how to actually deal with said trauma, so I'll be going to therapy for that, but I think the lessons I learned and the benefits I gained will stick with me since I'm taking concrete steps to deal with it now that I've identified a problem. Without the year long pause we all went through I'm not sure I would have had the time to sort through my brain so thoroughly.
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
panny 5y ago
They didn't? Here's an article stating the suicide rate had exceeded a year average in a few months in a California hospital, https://fee.org/articles/a-years-worth-of-suicide-attempts-in-four-weeks-the-unintended-consequences-of-covid-19-lockdowns/ https://fee.org/articles/a-years-worth-of-suicide-attempts-i... And on the east coast in GA, the same, https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lockdown-suicides-on-the-rise/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lockdown-suicides-on-t... These articles are during the low point stated in the OP article.
- wellthisishn 5y ago
  Right. I think the article in the OP is based on questionable data
  - DanBC 5y ago
    The data is probably good, but SA has a habit of dumping 48 different sources into an article, and pulling out 250 short snippets from those sources. So things tend to get misunderstood or misrepresented. The original researchers are often very careful to put a bunch of context in, and he just strips all of that out. Because there's so much stuff there it takes an age to go through and verify it all, so any debunking happens in two weeks time. And by then the HN thread has closed and no-one cares. I'm most familiar with the English data and SA gets a fair amount wrong. In England the message is very much "no rise yet, but we need to be cautious about the future".
- evgen 5y ago
  Do you have sources other than known right-wing advocacy groups for these claims? As a simple example the FEE article is nothing but random anecdotes, while the NR article does not have supporting data for the headline claim but tries to play a similar game by suggesting that opioid overdose deaths should be categorized as either suicides or suicide attempts. Articles attempting to manufacture a suicide problem related to the lockdown also tend to mix in 'suicide ideation' with suicide attempts, usually while ignoring the fact that surveys of such ideation have almost no depth to them and seem to be a recent invention to try to answer the undeniable fact that actual suicides have decreased.
mactrey 5y ago
To me suicide is an reaction to this thought: "things are bad for me, and they are never going to get better." If you think your life might get significantly better in the next couple of years, you probably aren't likely to commit suicide. I'm sure many people experienced sudden and traumatizing depression with the onset of Covid. But we mostly all knew it would be temporary - we knew things would get better again, even if we didn't know the timelines. There wasn't a "forever" there, so suicide wasn't a common reaction.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Wow, this is very insightful
- TylerLives 5y ago
  I wouldn't expect Covid to be the main reason for suicide, but a small nudge to those who are already close to it.
- twox2 5y ago
  From what I've been told, suicide is often impulsive, and when it's not impulsive it's an escape from some kind of psychological or physical agony - like you're in a burning building and jump out the window. If you're in a room that's on fire, then knowledge that it won't be on fire a month from now won't keep you in the room. I think it's a tough subject to generalize.
  - mPReDiToR 5y ago
    Personal anecdata: Going all the way down in the 90's made me aware that "this too shall pass" is a way of life I live by. As a coping mechanism, waiting out the tough times seems to work. I wonder how many people could be helped by knowing that the glib "it gets better" is true, "but you have to feel like this until then" is the part they don't remind you of?
- HWR_14 5y ago
  About 1/3 of people who attempt suicide do so in response to an immediate trigger, and if stopped, never try again. That's why immediate intervention has such a good success rate. And that's ignoring the people who are going through a longer term but still temporary (certainly less than a year) struggle. I think you're assuming "this is when a rational actor would commit suicide". And for some people, e.g. the terminally ill, this is true.
egberts 5y ago
Ummm, it did rise. Over 90,000 died from overdose in 2020, more than vehicle accidents or COVID.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  Many overdoses are the result of inconsistent potency. This is trivial to solve by letting addicts get their dope from a licensed pharmacist instead of the sketchy dealer down the block. Another common cause of overdoses is people who lost their tolerance taking a dose that they would have with their previous tolerance. To attribute every suicide as an overdose is wrong on many levels.
  - d10y3vh5 5y ago
    while there are merits to "harm reduction", none of its proponents think through logical consequences. you may argue a heroin addict has a right to heroin, but does a pangolin scale juicer have that right also and is the government now responsible for supplying them with safe pangolin scales? what is the "correct" amount of heroin a person should be able to get from a pharmacy? how much should that cost? what if the "correct" amount for me is just under lethal dose and im essentially comatose between hits? is that society's responsibility to nurture my addiction. why is a single state-issued dose compassionate care, when many addicts need 4 or 5 doses per day to feel good? when i can longer afford the pharmaceutical dose, won't i just go back to street heroin? if it's blindingly obvious that no state should seek to ensure that a "just-under-lethal-comatose-all-day" type of habit is supported and funded by the state, why would the state think it has some obligation to fund and support any habit at all. people get hooked on gambling and sky-diving too, but no reasonable people think it's the state's responsibility to maintain those.
    - leetcrew 5y ago
      I don't think anyone is entitled to an unlimited supply of their drug of choice from the state. but I do think they are entitled to a relatively safe supply of their poison, free from dangerous cuts (fentanyl, levamisole, etc.) and the threat of violence (from either the state or the seller). if they die, so be it. that was always a possibility. beyond that, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis for the rest of us. unlike gambling or sky-diving, drugs of abuse are pretty cheap to manufacture. it might be cheaper to just give people drugs than to deal with the constant petty theft perpetrated by addicts. or it might not be, who knows?
mxcrossr 5y ago
I guess the problem with the overdose theory he mentioned is it would be quite odd that all of the excess suicides would manifest in one way. But maybe if you break down suicides by method you could see something. Regardless, I think it’s interesting how we all just assumed they had to go up during lock down. It’s a reminder that depression is very complex, and our intuitions about how to fix it can be wildly off.
a0-prw 5y ago
I saw a report that child suicide attempts rose 200% in Canada during lockdown. Might be bullshit. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/pandemic-safety-measures-children-teen-health-impact-1.5953326 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/pandemic-safety-meas...

50 points by salonium_ 5y ago

Well personally I didn't kill myself because I finally got around 6 hours of free time from the lack of commute and pointless face to face talk at work

sunshineforever 5y ago

I don't think that life became more depressing during covid. People spent more time with their families. The government literally handed out free money to everyone. A moratorium was placed on evictions. For a lot of poorer people, this was a weird, but not necessary bad year.

wellthisishn 5y ago
The article also isn't considering that a number of suicides would have been reported as Covid deaths
- stkdump 5y ago
  I don't think that is the case.
  - panny 5y ago
    The article however does mention, >I’m tempted to wonder if people are misclassifying suicides as overdoses Which would not surprise me in the least given the data is coming from CDC. Everyone from all sides seem to agree that CDC lost lots of credibility with coronavirus.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      If suicides via (intentional) overdose went up, but not by other methods, i think that would raise even more questions of why only 1 method went up.
- DanBC 5y ago
  That's not how suicide statistics work.
- gruez 5y ago
  "This guy fell off a bridge.... probably caused by covid"
tailspin2019 5y ago
I don’t blame you for this, but this is a bit of a narrow view in my opinion. There are lots of people that lost their jobs (eg in retail) and now face a total crisis because not only are they out of work, but the entire sector that they worked in has imploded and will never be the same again. At least in the UK, government support was not enough to replace full-time incomes, so those living month to month would have had a very tough time on a reduced income. I know of lots of well paid people who were happily furloughed and took “free money”, and others who carried on working, with arguably better working conditions (from home, no committing, lower costs) But for many people in lower paid jobs and with lower incomes I’m sure the situation has been very depressing at times. Not to mention those who I’ve been very ill or lost loved ones. I have had a very positive COVID experience. Really all of the benefits and none of the downsides (so far). I expected many on HN will be the same. Most of us can comfortably work from home, many already did, and we are (on average) a well paid group. But I’ve also felt incredibly guilty at times at how “happy” I’ve been at various points during lockdown, while knowing full well that many others are having the exact opposite experience.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Life became incredibly more depressing for me during covid. Still, I don't think it will result in an increased number of suicides - because there is hope that things will be over soon. When things reopen and the economy collapse / the recession hits / the bubble burst, I think we'll see more suicides.

sldksk 5y ago

This is easy to explain. ‘Death of despair’-related suicides, which are the kind that have been rising in most developed countries for the past few decades, are overwhelmingly a matter of people feeling stagnant or hopeless in their socioeconomic circumstances. Note drug-related issues are very often, if not usually, downstream from those socioeconomic issues. And the answer is: when the rest of society slows down, suddenly those who couldn’t keep up don’t feel so behind. The only reason this comes as a surprise to so many people is that capitalism suggests that all progress is inherently good with no contingencies, or it draws a binary between progress and regression. Associated with that is American hyper-individualism. Ask a Marxist, for example, and they will offer an understanding of society which centers those who reproduce it, and along with that a sophisticated interest in theories of alienation and the role alienation plays in a person’s relations to their society. For a Marxist, these statistics would have been expected.

QuixoticQuibit 5y ago
> And the answer is: when the rest of society slows down, suddenly those who couldn’t keep up don’t feel so behind. Well said. This goes beyond even the socioeconomic causes of suicide that you mentioned and surely includes people with depression, (social) anxiety disorders, etc.
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  As an anecdotal data point, I have social anxiety, and depression diagnosed and I have been feeling relieved by the whole thing. Going to office etc, left me with constant worries and thought cycles, energy spent on analysing and overthinking social situations. Now there's just video calls/chat messages I have to worry about and there's fewer attack vectors for worries there. Same with random/events parties happening, even with friends I never felt very comfortable attending. Now I always had the perfect excuse to just stay at home.
wildpeaks 5y ago
> when the rest of society slows down, suddenly those who couldn’t keep up don’t feel so behind. Exactly, and I'd expect them to rise once things go back to "normal" because those who were already in a bad situation before Covid will rightfully feel left behind once more.

mewpmewp2 5y ago

From my own anecdotal perspective, I have a depression/anxiety diagnosis, and may have at times had suicidal thoughts, but I would have never really acted on them. For me, life got easier and less stress free, mainly because I don't ever have to go outside and I got to work from home, which pretty much solved the "social anxiety" issue for me. I never felt comfortable at office and felt always stressed. So I've been happy and relieved about being locked in. Whether it's good in the long term, I'm not sure however, because I will get even less experience putting myself out there.

tailspin2019 5y ago
While recognising the possible “long term” challenge of not putting yourself out there, are you going to be able to sustain some of this new way of working post-COVID? (Ie primarily working from home). It seems like it’s good for you. I found a similar experience. Working from home is VERY good for my mental health. My anxiety almost disappeared completely at times. My dilemma is similar to yours. I have the ability to work from home forever now and never attend another in-person meeting again (became self-employed during COVID). However, like you, I recognise that I’ll need to ensure I don’t become a complete recluse and never leave the apartment! :)
- robflynn 5y ago
  I have depression and anxiety and the pandemic ended up helping me a lot. Yeah, the isolation sucked, but it did help my anxiety a bit when I stayed to myself. During that time of reduced anxiety, I was able to introspect a bit more without external stressors and was able to identify some trauma that led to the depression and anxiety -- something that I wasn't even aware was affecting me. I really don't know how to actually deal with said trauma, so I'll be going to therapy for that, but I think the lessons I learned and the benefits I gained will stick with me since I'm taking concrete steps to deal with it now that I've identified a problem. Without the year long pause we all went through I'm not sure I would have had the time to sort through my brain so thoroughly.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago

panny 5y ago

They didn't? Here's an article stating the suicide rate had exceeded a year average in a few months in a California hospital, https://fee.org/articles/a-years-worth-of-suicide-attempts-in-four-weeks-the-unintended-consequences-of-covid-19-lockdowns/ https://fee.org/articles/a-years-worth-of-suicide-attempts-i... And on the east coast in GA, the same, https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lockdown-suicides-on-the-rise/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lockdown-suicides-on-t... These articles are during the low point stated in the OP article.

wellthisishn 5y ago
Right. I think the article in the OP is based on questionable data
- DanBC 5y ago
  The data is probably good, but SA has a habit of dumping 48 different sources into an article, and pulling out 250 short snippets from those sources. So things tend to get misunderstood or misrepresented. The original researchers are often very careful to put a bunch of context in, and he just strips all of that out. Because there's so much stuff there it takes an age to go through and verify it all, so any debunking happens in two weeks time. And by then the HN thread has closed and no-one cares. I'm most familiar with the English data and SA gets a fair amount wrong. In England the message is very much "no rise yet, but we need to be cautious about the future".
evgen 5y ago
Do you have sources other than known right-wing advocacy groups for these claims? As a simple example the FEE article is nothing but random anecdotes, while the NR article does not have supporting data for the headline claim but tries to play a similar game by suggesting that opioid overdose deaths should be categorized as either suicides or suicide attempts. Articles attempting to manufacture a suicide problem related to the lockdown also tend to mix in 'suicide ideation' with suicide attempts, usually while ignoring the fact that surveys of such ideation have almost no depth to them and seem to be a recent invention to try to answer the undeniable fact that actual suicides have decreased.

mactrey 5y ago

To me suicide is an reaction to this thought: "things are bad for me, and they are never going to get better." If you think your life might get significantly better in the next couple of years, you probably aren't likely to commit suicide. I'm sure many people experienced sudden and traumatizing depression with the onset of Covid. But we mostly all knew it would be temporary - we knew things would get better again, even if we didn't know the timelines. There wasn't a "forever" there, so suicide wasn't a common reaction.

tailspin2019 5y ago
Wow, this is very insightful
TylerLives 5y ago
I wouldn't expect Covid to be the main reason for suicide, but a small nudge to those who are already close to it.
twox2 5y ago
From what I've been told, suicide is often impulsive, and when it's not impulsive it's an escape from some kind of psychological or physical agony - like you're in a burning building and jump out the window. If you're in a room that's on fire, then knowledge that it won't be on fire a month from now won't keep you in the room. I think it's a tough subject to generalize.
- mPReDiToR 5y ago
  Personal anecdata: Going all the way down in the 90's made me aware that "this too shall pass" is a way of life I live by. As a coping mechanism, waiting out the tough times seems to work. I wonder how many people could be helped by knowing that the glib "it gets better" is true, "but you have to feel like this until then" is the part they don't remind you of?
HWR_14 5y ago
About 1/3 of people who attempt suicide do so in response to an immediate trigger, and if stopped, never try again. That's why immediate intervention has such a good success rate. And that's ignoring the people who are going through a longer term but still temporary (certainly less than a year) struggle. I think you're assuming "this is when a rational actor would commit suicide". And for some people, e.g. the terminally ill, this is true.

egberts 5y ago

Ummm, it did rise. Over 90,000 died from overdose in 2020, more than vehicle accidents or COVID.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
Many overdoses are the result of inconsistent potency. This is trivial to solve by letting addicts get their dope from a licensed pharmacist instead of the sketchy dealer down the block. Another common cause of overdoses is people who lost their tolerance taking a dose that they would have with their previous tolerance. To attribute every suicide as an overdose is wrong on many levels.
- d10y3vh5 5y ago
  while there are merits to "harm reduction", none of its proponents think through logical consequences. you may argue a heroin addict has a right to heroin, but does a pangolin scale juicer have that right also and is the government now responsible for supplying them with safe pangolin scales? what is the "correct" amount of heroin a person should be able to get from a pharmacy? how much should that cost? what if the "correct" amount for me is just under lethal dose and im essentially comatose between hits? is that society's responsibility to nurture my addiction. why is a single state-issued dose compassionate care, when many addicts need 4 or 5 doses per day to feel good? when i can longer afford the pharmaceutical dose, won't i just go back to street heroin? if it's blindingly obvious that no state should seek to ensure that a "just-under-lethal-comatose-all-day" type of habit is supported and funded by the state, why would the state think it has some obligation to fund and support any habit at all. people get hooked on gambling and sky-diving too, but no reasonable people think it's the state's responsibility to maintain those.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    I don't think anyone is entitled to an unlimited supply of their drug of choice from the state. but I do think they are entitled to a relatively safe supply of their poison, free from dangerous cuts (fentanyl, levamisole, etc.) and the threat of violence (from either the state or the seller). if they die, so be it. that was always a possibility. beyond that, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis for the rest of us. unlike gambling or sky-diving, drugs of abuse are pretty cheap to manufacture. it might be cheaper to just give people drugs than to deal with the constant petty theft perpetrated by addicts. or it might not be, who knows?

mxcrossr 5y ago

I guess the problem with the overdose theory he mentioned is it would be quite odd that all of the excess suicides would manifest in one way. But maybe if you break down suicides by method you could see something. Regardless, I think it’s interesting how we all just assumed they had to go up during lock down. It’s a reminder that depression is very complex, and our intuitions about how to fix it can be wildly off.

a0-prw 5y ago

I saw a report that child suicide attempts rose 200% in Canada during lockdown. Might be bullshit. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/pandemic-safety-measures-children-teen-health-impact-1.5953326 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/pandemic-safety-meas...