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Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

• rob_c 5y ago
  Can't talk about this yet still in various countries. And frankly other countries have denied this and just label deaths such as this as "excess non covid deaths" which is horribly disingenuous and insulting... How long until someone (in the mainstream media) counts human life days saved vs human life days lost due to mismanagement and bad policies.
• ihsw 5y ago
  > during pandemic The lockdowns are what has caused soaring mental health issues across whole sections of the population.
  • encryptluks2 5y ago
    Not just lockdowns, but the cancellation of physical activity programs. This has disproportionately affected lower-income populations as well. Many of the community and activity centers have closed throughout the pandemic, while wealthier private programs have remained open.
  • jinguang 5y ago
• bushbaba 5y ago
  Covid was a wealth transfer from the youth to the elderly
  • KiranRao0 5y ago
    Collective behavior in response to COVID was a life transfer from the youth to the elderly.
    • cryptonector 5y ago
      Very succint. Precise, correct, pithy.
    • scop 5y ago
      I’ve pondered this on occasion. In this era of people in their 80s holding many of the major positions in government and business in the US, I wonder whether this was their final attempt to prevent transferring power onto the newer generations. I’m not saying this was a conscious strategy, but it certainly was a very interesting phenomenon especially after listening to Eric Weinstein decry the lack of generational transfer in the US.
      • throwawayboise 5y ago
        There should be a mandatory retirement age for government. 65 sounds about right.
        • ralph84 5y ago
          Absolutely. Airline pilots are forced to retire at 65 and their decisions only affect a few hundred people. Politicians' decisions affect millions.
          • laurent92 5y ago
            I’d rather be governed by people who have 65 years of experience with life, than by people who snort coke at 40 to be the shark they’ve always wanted. Politicians never seem to take correct decisions anyway.
            • dclowd9901 5y ago
              Really? I feel exactly the opposite. I wouldn’t trust someone over 65 to drive me to the store.
              • 5y ago
  • oh_sigh 5y ago
    What do the elderly do with their money when they die?
    • Breazy 5y ago
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      A lot of them give it to assisted living facilites jsut before that happens. There is a huge industry around siphoning off assets from the elderly before they die.
      • joering2 5y ago
        worth watching Netflix "I Do Care". Sadly its very much like in the movie. At least here in USA (source: friend of family works in a assisted living facility and sees very bad stuff daily!)
    • gadflyinyoureye 5y ago
      Depends. A neighbor hated his family that he purposely caused his home to go into probate just to slow them down. Most of the time the money is passed onto the next generation. But here's the current problem: the boomers, as a generation, have a lot of assets, specifically housing, locked up as rentals. This has caused house to shoot up (though it is not the only factor). If the boomers die, I suspect that a large number of homes would become available at reasonable prices within the year of the death. For example, my parents own multiple rental homes (only of one of which they constructed for the express purpose of renting on a plot of land that the city thought was undevelop-able). When they die, my sister and I will sell the properties. While she lives near them, she doesn't want to manage them, and I don't since I live far away. By allowing the boomers to live longer, these assets remain locked up. They can continue to rent seek at the expense of the generations that came after them. This means that multiple generations, particularly millennials and zoomers are screwed.
      • throwawayboise 5y ago
  • xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    This is a bad take. At most, Covid was a wealth transfer from governments and middle-class to many lucky corporations and wealthy investors. But in reality, everyone is suffering. Let's say the opposite reaction happened and we prioritized heathy youths over vulnerable seniors. There would have been orders of magnitude more deaths by now, society would have collapsed in some places temporarily or permanently as healthcare systems break down entirely. The wealth transfer from the youth to the elderly is nothing new, it's been pretty continuous and generally correlates with elderly population. Covid just put pressure on the whole system.
    • tootahe45 5y ago
      Is it really a bad take? my parents & aunt had 28,34% gains respectively on the value of their main properties in just 1 year. I'm going to have to pay for that (or settle for a lot less living space) if i want to own anything here in the future. Definitely feels like a wealth transfer.
      • usrusr 5y ago
        Yeah, inflation tends do that. The pandemic has been good fuel for inflation and continues to do so, but the fire would have burnt anyways. The fire is monetary policy trying to force growth no matter what. And why is growth forced? Because it's the only way to allow the poor to slightly improve without questioning the endless accumulation of the wealthy.
        • janeroe 5y ago
          > The pandemic has been good fuel for inflation and continues to do so Not just some abstract "pandemic" but specific policies adopted by specific people. Don't turn it into a Hegelian providence as if no one is responsible and it's a self propagating process that would happen regardless.
          • astrange 5y ago
            It's because - people couldn't go on vacation so they all switched to buying durable goods at the same time. (that's why supply chains don't hold up, it's a crisis of abundance not deprivation.) - workers in some industries died (like meatpacking) or quit (like restaurants). - we haven't built enough houses since 1970 and everyone decided to buy a house at once. It's not because of stimulus though; making people poorer so they can't buy cars is not a good solution to cars being too expensive.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • slibhb 5y ago
    This seems unlikely given how many elderly people died of covid. Presumably their wealth was inherited by their children.
  • superkuh 5y ago
    No, covid is the common name for covid-19, the disease pathology that happens when you are infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus and your body fails to control it.
  • version_five 5y ago
    I'd say a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy. Inflation + restrictions has dramatically exacerbated inequality, as have the expectations we put on the working poor - leave home to deliver my food etc but don't you dare enjoy yourself. It's a coincidence that this also corresponds to transferring from young to old people. Overall, if you have a big house, country cottages, and lots of investments, you got a lot richer in the last couple years. If you live in a small apartment and work a low skill job, you have to keep doing that, for way less pay after inflation, have to find a way to look after your kids at home, and can't go outside except to work, because "we're all in this together" The whole episode has been a serious step back in human equality
    • cma 5y ago
      Stimulus and unemployment increases raised overall take-home pay during the year for many lower middle class and poor. For the very poor, increases in SNAP benefits as part of the stimulus outpaced food price inflation, but almost no articles about food inflation mention it. Unemployment is as low as it has been since 1999. There are legit shortages driving inflation in big categories, but wages are up too. Average wages in non-supervisory roles are up over 10% compared to two years ago, restaurant roles nearly 14%. Inflation directly hurts people with lots of savings in low yield accounts, not the working poor. That's not to say they did well compared to the rich in the pandemic, just that inflation taken as a single factor doesn't single them out.
  • Bolkan 5y ago
    Covid kills only old people. All the billionairs and politicians are old. (Think "don't look up")
  • forgotmypw17 5y ago
    Are we talking about the elderly who were locked up and isolated from any contact with people they depend on for basic survival needs?
    • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
      Where were they locking up the elderly? In fully staffed assisted living facilities?
      • ya_throw 5y ago
        By your same description, prison is a "fully staffed assisted living facility".
        • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
          No, it isn't.
          • ya_throw 5y ago
            Your implication is that the "full staffing" makes up for the fact that inmates can't leave nor have anyone visit. In which case, there is little difference between a care facility under lockdown, and a prison. A friend's grandmother died alone, without having seen friends or family for months, shut in her room in a care facility during 2020. I suppose you are one of the people who would also tell us that house arrest is "not hard".
            • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
              Reconsidering, it is fair to say prison is a fully staffed assisted living facility (excepting when prison is assisting with the dying). My implication though was that elderly were not "isolated from any contact with people they depend on for basic survival needs" in cases where they were put in assisted living facilities, because they provide for basic survival needs. > I suppose you are one of the people who would also tell us that house arrest is "not hard". Never implied that.
  • halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    This assumes there’s ever been “youth wealth”. Boomers have been systematically disenfranchising millennials on down since they’ve gotten into power. They’re probably one of the most selfish and entitled generations that have ever existed.
  • hogrider 5y ago
    All societies are heavily gerontocratic, democracies or not. Of course for any crisis this always happens, see climate change, 2008, etc.
• m_ke 5y ago
  Childhood obesity also jumped from 19% to 22% from 2020 to 2021 (https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/09/17/1038211236/weight-gain-obesity-children-teens-pandemic https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...)
  • xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    Yeah I think mine did too.
    • therealdrag0 5y ago
      I lost a few from getting Omicron so there's that.
• awb 5y ago
  > Researchers, though, cautioned against drawing direct lines between these spikes and conditions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted nearly every aspect of U.S. life starting in the middle of last March. > A heightened appreciation about mental health in 2020 might have prompted parents to get their children mental health treatment, they said. > “Conversely, by spending more time at home together with young persons, adults might have become more aware of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and thus been more likely to take their children to the ED," according to the report. Happy to see a correlation != causation disclaimer.
  • diontron 5y ago
    • responsivity 5y ago
      Seems cyclical. Going insane causes people to lock people/themselves in their homes and locking people in homes/being locked in homes causes insanity.
  • LexGray 5y ago
    One could just as easily draw the conclusion that spending time with parents was the cause of the extra stress. I wonder if there is any chance of actual actionable data being teased out.
    • ya_throw 5y ago
      Parents who were also trying to hold down jobs. At the time, my partner and I had a 1 year old and were both working. It was incredibly difficult, stressful, and 100% not sustainable. We cracked after a few weeks. We also strongly believe that just putting young children in front of screens for hours at a time is detrimental to their development, and did not do that like so many other parents (who all justified it because they "had to" to keep working. That is another whole debate - I am sure that not many people would have gone to the effort we did during lockdowns and restrictions to shield our kids from the poor parenting practices that are now widespread). Also, having young children is incredibly isolating, and already something like a lockdown in itself. Humans in that position are supposed to go out and see as many people as they can, usually in the form of meeting other parents at their houses, cafes, parks, etc. All of that was illegal, at least where I lived. My blood still boils thinking of how horribly harmful that was.
• paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > Conversely, by spending more time at home together with young persons, adults might have become more aware of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and thus been more likely to take their children to the ED Is ED the emergency department? Or something else?
  • kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Yup. Emergency Department.
• paperwasp42 5y ago
  I'm not even a parent, but I've been incredibly distressed by this trend. Several of my good friends have had their daughters attempt suicide (luckily, none have succeeded, although 2 extremely close calls). It's been utterly gut-wrenching to watch these talented, kind, ambitious girls spiral into shells of their former selves. Luckily, all my friends are fellow techies who are upper-middle class, and can afford medication and therapy (and in one case, out-of-state long-term hospitalization.) But even with insurance, they're looking at many thousands of dollars of treatment. It makes me sick to my stomach to think of all the lower-class parents who are terrified of their kids killing themselves, but can't afford therapy or psychiatry visits, and can't get pro-bono help (apparently the wait lists are several months long in many cities.) It's past time the West reckons with our mental health crisis. Why is it that we're the wealthiest nations in the world, yet our kids are more stressed and depressed than kids in third-world countries? I think society will only become more and more unstable until we spend time seriously addressing that question and adjust our culture accordingly.
  • cultofmetatron 5y ago
    medication isn't going to fix that. our society is infected at every level. Urban planning is setup so you can't get anywhere without a car so kids are stuck online all day. We don't have public spaces where you aren't expected to spend money. Our food is tainted and industrialized to have less nutrition. We spent decades digging this grave
    • bpodgursky 5y ago
      > Urban planning is setup so you can't get anywhere without a car so kids are stuck online all day The reason kids were stuck online all day over the past two years is not urban planning; it is because kids were not allowed to go to school or socialize. You can make claims against the base rate this way, but not against the increase over the past two years. (also, I have no reason to think that urban kids are in a better mental state than suburban ones this pandemic, and have anecdotal reasons to think the opposite).
      • 5y ago
• encryptluks2 5y ago
• crackercrews 5y ago
  This reporting doesn't make clear that the increase was almost entirely among girls. There was little change for boys. > There was a 22.3 percent spike in ER trips for potential suicides by children aged 12 to 17 in summer 2020 compared to 2019. > The data was particularly alarming among among girls aged 12 to 17. Between Feb. 21 and March 20 this year, emergency department visits for potential suicide attempts were up 50.6 percent compared to the same period in 2019, data showed.
  • watwut 5y ago
    I suspect one reason are online games. Boys are more likely to play them and in lockdown, they were the one of few socialization available. It does not matter what are reasons for disparity. But, the boys were more likely to continue some unchanged socialization ad they had before. They already had established groups to play with and so on.
    • jsodw 5y ago
      Girls continue to have Instagram.
      • newsclues 5y ago
        Where the activity can be distressing or malicious in terms of jealousy and trolling
        • watwut 5y ago
          Online gaming too, severely too. Maybe even more. But, it is closer to irl communication.
      • Breazy 5y ago
      • watwut 5y ago
        1.) Boys too. 2.) It is not socialization with active voice chat. That is more like writing letter or something like that. It will do less to make your brain feel like you have social connection. The thing that is supposed to make difference (according to psychologist that had talk about social isolation) is talking. People who call have similar psychological results as those heavily socialized. if you write mails a lot, you reassemble lonely people more.
• rhizome 5y ago
  I think one thing that will make the history books is how little innovation or adaptation there was in educational technology, rendering a truly depressing set of prospects for learning over the pandemic. A lot of companies have made a LOT of money in edutech going back to the 90s CDROM days and what do students get when the system escapes these companies's grasp and students need some real imagination put to the matter? A grid of Facetimes and draconian activity surveillance.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    What were they supposed to do? They had about two weeks to go from fully in-classroom to fully-remote with no warning, in the middle of the school year. I don't care what kind of technology you have, that is going to be a clusterfuck.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • fny 5y ago
      The problem was this clusterfuck lasted for far too long and public guidance was and still is a complete mess. We panicked everyone instead of having a level-headed policy where we stratified risk by age and health condition.
      • SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        Should we also stratify by Relation to risk, and how do we enforce this ? Also how would policies stratified by age/health work? Only unhealthy or old people need to mask when they go to the store filled with unmasked, Covid-spreading young people?
        • _blaise_ 5y ago
          That would be fantastic. I'm triple vaxxed and have had covid twice. I frankly don't care anymore.
        • 5y ago
• spookthesunset 5y ago
  • noah_buddy 5y ago
    I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can find many of those politicians, reporters, and public personalities who supported the invasion of Iraq still slinging their opinions out to the world and receiving lots of attention. Something tells me that this, like many other tragedies and fuck-ups of our time will be memory-holed and we will learn less than nothing in aggregate.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • User23 5y ago
    By all indications those who made it happen will be the ones writing the history.
  • aemreunal 5y ago
    > [...] a virus that was nowhere near a risk to children. People continuously forget about (or maliciously omit) even a single step beyond someone's infection. One infected person can spread it to others. Even if the individual's risk may be low, soon, you start spreading it to people that are more at risk. Schools can thus become superspreader locations that put their parents and teachers and whatnot at risk. Whether or not everything we did with schools is right, not doing anything would've led to millions of more people dead. > [...] our hysterical reaction to Covid, [...] Everyone certainly did some wrong things and arguably are continuing to do so, but "hysterical" is not how I would put it. We were facing a [relatively] unknown virus with poorly-understood effects to this day. We still can't predict who will be affected how by it. I think this rhetoric is dangerous and some points of it are [to me] blindingly obviously wrong.
    • colordrops 5y ago
      Way more people forget about (or aren't even aware of) isanother step beyond someone's infection - the externialities of covid measures. With the trillions of dollars lost, depression, suicide, businesses closed, undiagnosed and untreated illnesses, family feuds over the politicization of covid, delay in children's education and development, and countless other facets, it's not a stretch to say that the damage done by the policies is often worse than the disease. Public officials only care about the single tunnel vision metric of body count even if the cumulative damage of their policies is far worse, and ends in more non-covid deaths and the decimation of countless lives and livelihoods.
• Lamad123 5y ago
  Cherchez les unjustifiéd lockdowns, cher Talleyrand!
  • lordgrenville 5y ago
    Is this a reference to the quote "cherchez la femme" being attributed to Talleyrand? I found that claim here[0], but it doesn't seem to be correct; this source[1] attributes it to Dumas. Talleyrand may have said « La politique, c’est les femmes » [2] but I couldn't find a clear source for that either. [0] https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cherchez_la_femme#%C3%89tymologie https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cherchez_la_femme#%C3%89tymol... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherchez_la_femme#Origin_of_the_phrase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherchez_la_femme#Origin_of_th... [2] https://www.20minutes.fr/politique/1705183-20151008-anne-gravoin-claude-chirac-yvonne-gaulle-femmes-peuvent-avoir-grande-influence-pouvoir https://www.20minutes.fr/politique/1705183-20151008-anne-gra...
    • Lamad123 5y ago
      Most quotes in the Internet are fake!! I thought Napoleon said it.
• blooalien 5y ago
  Of course nothing that happened before the pandemic could have contributed at all to any feelings of hopelessness. The absolute despair required to want to "end it all" just suddenly happened because of this one situation. The constant 24/7 barrage of "doom and gloom" and just general insanity in the news and "social" media couldn't have laid any groundwork for anyone to feel like there's just no point in even trying to live anymore…
  • throwawayyear22 5y ago
    In regards to the media, parents could be more dismissive of the doom and gloom. Instead I watch parents repeat in front of their children that corporations are evil, sea level will rise by 10's of feet soon, racism everywhere, reverse racism everywhere, the China Communists will take over the world, that the U.S. doesn't manufacture anything, etc. I recall one adult in my entire childhood that laughed off a doom and gloom discussion and one other that said "relax you'll be fine". It immediately paused my chronic anxiety as calm is contagious.
    • it_does_follow 5y ago
      The idea that if people would stop talking how the world is so bad the world wouldn't be so bad is one of the strangest patterns of thinking I've seen pop up here more recently. The world is in a state of decline, climate change being just one of many stressors on society. Pretending this is not the case doesn't make it go away, and if anything the media is aggressively downplaying the current situation we are in. Anxiety and despair don't have to be the only reactions to decline, but we certainly won't get past those as long as people keep pretending everything is fine.
      • Der_Einzige 5y ago
        The world is not in decline. We do not live on a "spaceship earth" because of the potential for astroid/moon mining and space based solar panels. Technological progress continues to outstrip our environmental damage done in it's persuit, and ultimately only technological solutions will get us out of the current issues with climate change. That, and a healthy amount of climate adaptation. Apocalyptic rhtoric is both wrong and a mind virus that cripples meaningful policy discussions. I have my problems with Steven Pinker but this is one issue where he is so correct on it's not even funny.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rcpt 5y ago
  Did suicide go up or just attempts? Using methods unlikely to work and with the added safety of having people in the house all the time I could imagine that many of the new attempts were not intended to succeed
  • crackercrews 5y ago
    This is a fair question. Especially because the increase was almost entirely among girls. They have a much higher attempt rate but a much lower completion rate than boys. [1] It is possible that these attempts are more about distress than true attempts to end life. Still a problem, but not as much if the suicide rates did not also go up. 1: https://www.verywellmind.com/gender-differences-in-suicide-methods-1067508 https://www.verywellmind.com/gender-differences-in-suicide-m...
• qbasic_forever 5y ago
  It would be truly fascinating to compare this increase in suicide to any changes in suicide for children in China or other countries which weathered the pandemic much better than the US. If it really is the case that harsh lockdowns create more suicides then surely China and its much more swift and drastic entire lockdowns of million person cities would generate more of them per capita, no? I suspect though that we'd see there's not much increase or change at all for suicides in countries that handled the pandemic better than the US. People want to blame lockdowns, remote schooling or specific actions in the US when in reality the incredibly horrific response and deaths of nearly a million Americans is horrifying enough on its own.
  • vlovich123 5y ago
    Lock down for a short time with a reopening vs prolonged ok and off lock downs might be different. Also, China data probably isn’t trustworthy on a topic like this, right?
    • jinguang 5y ago
  • codr7 5y ago
    There are obvious cultural differences that needs to be taken into account. If all you know is being told what to do for generations it won't feel the same. I'm pretty sure that once we sum this up, the interventions will be proven to have caused WAY more damage than any virus ever could.
  • sanedigital 5y ago
    Looking at China for numerical statistics of any sort is a fool’s errand. Nothing they report is accurate, especially with regards to COVID or the mental health of their populace.
  • nostrebored 5y ago
    Frankly this reads like a take by someone who is never around kids. Kids need social interaction. I know multiple kids who have basically been checked out of society and told they’ll kill their family if they socialize. Lockdowns and covid hysteria have certainly contributed to this.
• somehnacct3757 5y ago
  It's a wombo combo. Pandemic traps you at home with nothing to do, so you spend more time on social media, where the products are known to drive kids to depression.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• pdimitar 5y ago
  I'll join the chorus of the other sibling commenters here by expressing skepticism that any medication will at all help with anything. Psychiatric medication often simply numbs your brain so it stops being worried about things that legitimately and truly torment it. It reduces your sensitivity, it knocks off your normal brain chemicals balance, and it turns you into a robot. I've had a family member go through this a long time ago. It was soul-crushing watching them when I visited. They were almost turned to vegetables with chemical means. Doing all this does NOT solve the underlying problems that make people reach for suicide. Those problems are societal and very deeply ingrained at this point. We must look for the reasons that younger people start attempting suicides more than before and try and cure the illness, not the symptoms. I even started finding it offensive when I see people offering medication. It comes across as: "Here ya go champ, let's again deceive your brain that everything's alright when it really isn't, now off ya go and be a good worker bee, and oh by the way that'll be $2000 for the 10 minutes session". Could it be that we just treat people worse and worse with time? I say yes, yes we do. But judging by a lot of other replies in this thread, I'd venture to say that many people are not ready to hear it, sadly, and are still in denial, and will shout anybody thinking otherwise away from their platforms (whichever they might be, virtual or in the meat space). And until that changes, the problem will only deepen.
  • dools 5y ago
    Ironically it is this sort of arm chair anti science bullshit that increase suicide risk among the mentally ill y contributing to a stigma of being medicated for a mental health condition.
    • pdimitar 5y ago
      Not at all ironically, you didn't present anything scientific either. And I don't stigmatize people for seeking help. I am skeptical if medications help because I haven't seen them work for the several people I know who tried them.
      • _y5hn 5y ago
        Anti-psychotic drugs helped stabilize someone I know. It did matter to find the right drug, and nothing else helped. So there, one anecdote vs. another. I do agree with the general sentiment, though that has to do with the rulers of this world (not politicians).
• elil17 5y ago
  I lost my best friend and a mentee to suicide in 2021, both in their early 20s. My most important observation is that both of them killed themselves for a myriad of overlapping reasons: childhood trauma from physical abuse, lack of access to therapy, body shame/eating disorders, and stress from experiencing discrimination/hate in their schools and religious communities, as well as more issues which I’m sure were hidden from those around them. They both had problems before the pandemic, COVID just added another to the list. In a way, theres a reason to be optimistic - any problem you solve that’s causing people real suffering will reduce suicides. There are so many opportunities to tackle this problem.
  • Arisaka1 5y ago
    Every time I share with someone that I'm depressed and think of suicide they're like "just get therapy bro", but I'm depressed not just from the isolation that came with the pandemic (I'm high risk due to an underlying health issue) but also because I'm unemployed, and instead of feeling fun discovering things I can do with code, all I feel is heat because I'm unemployed. Someday, when we mature enough as a society, maybe we'll touch on the subject on high rates of male suicide during the absolutely normal periods of time, and how it's all driven by the pressure to sustain yourself and succeed in playing the game of capitalism.
    • Dumblydorr 5y ago
      So sorry to hear friend. I've been there, I wager if you find the right job, you'll feel a lot better. I know it's tough when everyone around you looks at you with heat, that was my prime motivation to get a job tbh! Since then, I've discovered the job provides a lot of meaning and purpose, it's a great thing. Good luck, I hope you can find a position.
• supperburg 5y ago
  Maybe not exactly relevant but I’m early 30s and Ive had breakout schizoaffective disorder for a year. It’s bipolar disorder and schizophrenia at the same time. And I have almost come to the point where I can’t live with it anymore in the past few weeks because the symptoms evolve over time. I just wanted to leave this here in case I do die soon. The hardest symptoms to deal with are the depression and anxiety. But the depression I have experienced is absolutely black. I thought I knew what depression was before but I didn’t know and I think very few people do know. It is difficult just to look at an object because there’s nothing in the object. Usually there are emotions and implications and ideas but you don’t know there can be nothing until you experience nothing. And that is such a huge lesson is that you are experiencing intense emotions all the time but you just don’t realize it until they are gone. When you sit back on the couch and have a feeling like you want to continue to exist, this is actually an intense form of contentment because it’s absence is an intense form of depression/anxiety. I am now to see these things clearly now because due to the nature of my disease the depression/anxiety come and go full force many times per day. And this is the ultimate lesson that I want to spread: nothing is depressing or sad. There is a dial in the brain that makes you content or depressed and the position of this dial is purely and completely independent of everything else including the circumstances of your life. There is a correlation between your circumstances and your mood but my point is that I know this absolutely to be true: if you could just stick that dial to contentment then everything would be awesome and it wouldn’t impair your ability to live your life fully or grieve properly or whatever. People think that depression is a necessary part of life. This is completely wrong and you could never know it unless you have experienced the literal insanity that I have experienced
  • donnythecroc 5y ago
    Please talk to someone about this, friend, parent, doctor. Consider all options including psilocybin.
    • wruza 5y ago
      Are you sure about the latter? I mean yeah, responsible use and all that, but advising to take even a lightest trip being schizophrenic, depressed and anxious many times a day… I'd stick with the doctor option.
• throwaway543782 5y ago
  I work with sex addicts. I've been very surprised (and skeptical) that suicide and various psychological breakdowns weren't being reported as being higher since covid hit. At least in my little bubble the emotional and psychological struggle has escalated greatly in these covid times of increased anxiety, destroyed routines, and much deeper isolation. Everyone's trying to cope, one way or another. It's hard to watch. I personally keep trying to shake the jadedness, getting sucked into technical work for the numbing blanket of my mind, I want to look my family members in the eyes. To be present with them. It's... kind of working.
• danschumann 5y ago
  Not to be reductive of a complex issue, but when I first discovered feelings wheel,I kept the tab open, and at various points in the day, I would attempt to pinpoint my exact emotional state and sort it into a category. If you don't have the categories, you can't sort things out. A house cannot be clean unless there is a place for everything.
• deft 5y ago
  • IAmEveryone 5y ago
    This is about attempts (!) in young (!) women (!). That’s so specific, it’s suffering from multiple-endpoint problems: look at 50 subgroups and some are always going to show some seemingly drastic change. Here, the reporting of this factoid almost certainly means there was no significant change in actual suicides, or in attempted suicides of the population at large. So both may well be true.
• whatshisface 5y ago
  The medication debate, on this forum of smart and reasonable people, comes out as one side yelling 1+1=2 at a crowd who's yelling back that 2+2=4. Yes, staying on strong mood-neutralizing antidepressants forever isn't a full life and it's probably bad for your liver. Yes, when you are laying in bed and can't do anything, those external factors that are making you hate your life will get worse until something, including a chemical that's bad for your kidneys, gets you up and walking. They are both true at the same time.
• wruza 5y ago
  This pandemic is very strange mental-wise, all my doctors note that. The US, as far as I understand, has huge lockdowns and that may be the factor, but in my country it's called "an advisory self-isolation" and everyone basically lives their life like before, except wearing masks in public places and mandatory vaccination to visit a mall or a restaurant (also "manageable"). I'm not a social person (age almost 40), and I ought not to feel any consequences of that, cause even a strict lockdown wouldn't change my life too much. And I have a friend who isn't particularly stress-prone (a former warzone guy, 4 kids, a strong mindset). And guess what, we both experienced numerous acute panic attacks in 2020, without realizing what it was. We both have called an ambulance and thought this is the end of me, only to learn later what panic attack is. And we both never got covid. Doctors say that it is a very common phenomenon to observe. Idk about him, but my mental state I find pretty questionable now, because something induces anxiety in it non-stop from the spring 2020. I don't watch TV, neither read on pandemic situation consciously. Visited therapist for a whole last year. I can imagine what all that does to regular people, and probably can't imagine what teens may feel about it. Can anyone share similar observations, or am I just a coincidence?
  • asxd 5y ago
    I went to the emergency room after working from home for ~6 months when the pandemic hit. I was having severe chest pain, shaking uncontrollably, and feeling very uneasy. I thought something was really wrong, and ended up going to the emergency room, where they told me it was a panic attack, and everything was okay physically. Like you, it was also the first time I had experienced a panic attack and learned what it felt like.
    • wruza 5y ago
      I thought something was really wrong Yeah, the fear of death as they call it. I really didn't understand this phrase before, thinking it was something abstract. It's unlike any other feeling I've had, just off the charts. And I'm (was) not particularly the guy who is scared to watch a horror movie alone in the night.
      • 5y ago
• DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  The research paper[1] in the Lancet from Feb. 2020, on the psychological effects of quarantine predicted this. I think while the first quarantine / lock-down could not be avoided, the current situation could be avoided if we were able to battle the misinformation and reach 90% vaccination in every country. This pandemic is more severe than it has to be because it's also a mental health crisis. The people engaging in anti-vaxx conspiracies sound out of touch and deluded, but I think this is their way to cope. (believing in magic, wishful thinking, denial, are all pretty common with disease/health issues or in the face of uncertainty). Like an ostrich sticking their head into the sand it's probably how they deal with many other challenges in life too. Question really is how to go forward. Those who say "let it rip" might have an agenda to kill as many people as possible on the planet (out of spite but probably because they're themselves deeply depressed or isolated). One proposal that many hate but could stop the pandemic is to allow exception for certain cases prescribed by a doctor, but for everybody else vaccination has to be mandatory. We did it with measles and smallpox, so why not with covid? ______ [1] Summary: We did a Review of the psychological impact of quarantine using three electronic databases. Of 3166 papers found, 24 are included in this Review. Most reviewed studies reported negative psychological effects including post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion, and anger. Stressors included longer quarantine duration, infection fears, frustration, boredom, inadequate supplies, inadequate information, financial loss, and stigma. Some researchers have suggested long-lasting effects. In situations where quarantine is deemed necessary, officials should quarantine individuals for no longer than required, provide clear rationale for quarantine and information about protocols, and ensure sufficient supplies are provided. Appeals to altruism by reminding the public about the benefits of quarantine to wider society can be favourable. "The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence" https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30460-8/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
  • CryptoPunk 5y ago
    Vaccination cannot solve this. Herd immunity cannot be established with the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines, due to high transmissibity amongst the vaccinated. The problem is misinformation, but not the kind you refer to. The misinformation is in the impression given that COVID-19 is a much more dangerous virus than it is really is, especially for the non-elderly. Most of the public over-estimates the risk of COVID, by 10 to 100 times: https://archive.fo/wciQp https://archive.fo/wciQp
• classified 5y ago
  Had there been a pandemic in my youth, had I had to endure my parents 24/7 without escape for almost 2 years (and counting), I would have killed myself too.
• basisword 5y ago
  There are lots of attempts to explain this in the comments: lockdowns, lack of socialisation, pre-pandemic poor mental health, etc. But is not it not much more simple? We were and are in the midst of a global pandemic. A once is a lifetime catastrophic event. The kind of life changing event not experienced in the west since World War II. Of course that's going to cause mental health issues in almost everyone (to varying degrees). It has affected our lives in so many ways (probably many that we don't even realise yet) that trying to pinpoint a specific cause seems like a fools errand.
  • asteroidbelt 5y ago
    > A once is a lifetime catastrophic event This is one point of view. A different point of view is this is comparable to bad flu year, and all hysteria is caused by msm. > It has affected our lives in so many ways It has. But not the pandemic, but government and media overreaction to it.
    • watwut 5y ago
      > A different point of view is this is comparable to bad flu year, and all hysteria is caused by msm. That is not point of view. That is a lie. Point of view is different interpretation of same facts or different values attributing to them. Some things however are just lies.
      • _RPL5_ 5y ago
        > this is comparable to bad flu year Maybe he means the Spanish flu /s
    • _RPL5_ 5y ago
      Next you'll be asking whether lockdowns caused more harm than good. Oh-oh. I think we are 10 years too early for that particular discussion. This is a fascinating topic, though, and I can't help myself. I have two competing perspectives on this: 1. Covid is deadly, but not that deadly, certainly not to children and younger (<60 y.o.) adults. The initial decision to hunker down was warranted, but as the stresses of the various lockdowns begin to pile up, it's no longer obvious that the lockdowns and strict health regimes are worth it. The "stresses" would include suicides, drug overdoses, domestic violence, depression, and general depravity due to lost income. 2. Covid is deadly, and if not for the lockdowns, it would have killed a lot more people than it did. The number of lives saved by shutting down the economy far outweigh the cost of the lockdowns. If we didn't shut down and later push people to vaccinate, millions would have died in the US instead of hundreds of thousands. Anyone with an educated opinion wanna weigh in? Which perspective is correct?
• tinus_hn 5y ago
  It’s pretty sad to read all the handwaving about how we shouldn’t be so quick and blame this on lockdowns. When a leaf turns and it can be used as an argument for lockdowns, it’s immediately justified and if it later turns out false, how could we have known? But if a lot children kill themselves it shouldn’t be used as an argument against lockdowns. Lockdowns have become a very dangerous religion.
• deleted 5y ago
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• amznbyebyebye 5y ago
  Youth suicide is a very scary thing. I can’t imagine the grief it brings on the parents who are already suffering so much at the hands of this terrible situation. And let’s not forget about those who are single and the social isolation issues among other things. This thing has wrought havoc on so many of our lives. So much of the world is suffering. We thought there was light of the end of the tunnel, then omicron. It’s possible omicron won’t even be the last. Please take an extra moment to show a little bit extra patience, understanding, compassion, empathy, for everyone, as many of us are suffering, actively or passively, in some way, as a result of the collective trauma on our society.
• csee 5y ago
  How much of this is just young women spending more time on social media during covid? If social media was the cause of rising young female suicide pre-covid, then that could be it.
• sampo 5y ago
  Finland: suicides 2019 746 2020 717 https://findikaattori.fi/fi/10 https://findikaattori.fi/fi/10 https://findikaattori.fi/fi/table/10 https://findikaattori.fi/fi/table/10
  • ahmed_ds 5y ago
    The statistics shown in the news is "Emergency Department Visits for Suspected Suicide Attempts" which is different than death by suicides. Also, I wonder if Scandinavian countries can cope better in lockdowns as they often have to stay inside for extended periods of cold temperature.
• giantg2 5y ago
  Well, these kids have basically been grounded for 2 years with no end in sight (lack of hope), and probably feel that it's BS or they're being gaslit given that the risks for their age group are low. Especially since their age group is prone to risk taking and have higher risk activities like learning to drive.
  • jacquesm 5y ago
    Imagine growing up in a war zone or Palestine or something like that.
    • giantg2 5y ago
      Seems like the suicide rate in Palestine, especially in young adults, supports my position.
• acqbu 5y ago
• GrantZvolsky 5y ago
  In a report published in July 2020, the British government's SAGE group predicted that lockdowns and social distancing would result in more suicides with the following reasoning[1]: > The lockdown is likely to impact most determinants of good mental health, such as engagement in usual activities, social interactions, physical exercise, and financial stability. A Lancet study of the psychological impacts of quarantines, reviewing 24 academic papers, found that quarantined individuals experience severe psychological symptoms including post-traumatic stress, confusion, and anger. Stressors included longer quarantine duration, infection fears, frustration, boredom, inadequate supplies, inadequate information, financial loss, and stigma. The review showed that most of the effects come from a restriction of liberty through stricter quarantine measures, and that voluntary quarantine is associated with less distress and fewer long-term complications. [1]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907616/s0650-direct-indirect-impacts-covid-19-excess-deaths-morbidity-sage-48.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
  • tjoff 5y ago
    I feel that report is way too old to be relevant today.
• chernevik 5y ago
  The US policy response has been far more costly and destructive than it needed to be. The pandemic response completely ignored the costs of shutdowns. There has been little or no consideration of their impact on physical health, mental health, education, business, employment, worship. It has been as if COVID was the only risk and the only negative, and any other matter was necessarily secondary. To even mention these matters was considered obtuse. We have also exaggerated the risks. The disease has a 0.3 risk of fatality, still less for Omicron, and its fatalities largely occur among people with known risk factors. Children are essentially immune from serious effects, but this has been ignored by policy. ETA: At some point we need a serious reckoning of how we, as a society, mishandled this so badly. I think we'll find the mistakes we've made aren't made on COVID only.
  • Krasnol 5y ago
    Everybody I know who got Covid, got it from their kids which go to school. Yes mortality is low and kids are quite safe from hard impacts but they don't live in a bubble. They meet people. Also: even if you don't die of it, it could have severe impacts on your life. Long Covid is a thing. It's not that simple...
    • gjsman-1000 5y ago
      If everyone got it, destroying businesses and families for over a year in some states to postpone the inevitable was stupid.
      • Krasnol 5y ago
        How do/did you know it's "inevitable"? I didn't have Covid yet. At least as far as I know. I work in health IT and have been vaccinating and protecting myself according to the book. It works.
        • deleted 5y ago
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        • 5y ago
• someonehere 5y ago
  I never thought I’d be the victim of this pandemic but consider myself a victim now. My mental health has deteriorated to a point where it’s difficult to juggle work and family responsibilities. I put family first and work second. But the people I work with don’t know or care that I can’t work on something because I’m home stuck taking care of family trapped in quarantine hell. When I do tell them some change their tone. I’m suffering from the fact that when I work, I give it 100%. Any less and I feel like a failure. I’ve had blips at work where I’ve threatened to my boss that I can’t work there anymore because I can’t give it 100%. I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I get fired. I’d rather leave on my own terms and let someone who can do my job at their 100% in. It’s not my job’s fault for my home arrangement. They’ve gone above and beyond to give me support and work with me. At the same time there’s no support from our government to help me with assistance should I decide I can’t work anymore. Our government has failed on a lot and it doesn’t matter if it’s Trump or Biden. There’s too much red tape and too much looking out for big businesses and not enough to help people.
  • 18237198371q 5y ago
    Taking pride in your work is a good thing. However, consider that it's all relative... your 50% effort is probably another person's 100% effort. You are totally allowed to dial it back and focus more on yourself and your family. In fact most people probably would not even notice if you did so. The first few years of my career, I worked as hard as possible and started feeling deeply ill. I realized the need to put forth my maximum effort was all self-imposed, totally in my head. Now I personally try to do as little work as possible, and I am still highly regarded at my job.
  • hogrider 5y ago
    You need to start seeing yourself as a survivor of all this even if you're not over it yet. I was bummed the fuck out when I got covid but the truth is made it out ok and circa 50 million people didn't, that's a memento mori if there is one.
• cjbgkagh 5y ago
  What hope did we offer the youth that their lives will be livable anyway. For many their financial future is basically debt serfdom. With asset price bubbles, hidden inflation, and wage suppression I don’t know how an ordinary person could hope to live middle class life and I only expect it to get worse.
  • halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    This was also trending before covid; no wonder millennials have such distain for the generation in power.
• bobbyasdfasdf7 5y ago
  I don't understand why people try to blame mental health effects on our mitigation attempts and not the horror of covid itself. It's like blaming seasonal depression on wearing coats and staying inside instead of the fact that it's cold and dark outside. The fact that there's an extremely contagious disease that has a good chance of maiming you and has killed 800,000 Americans is enough to make you depressed all on its own.
• temptemptemp111 5y ago
• guilhas 5y ago
  I would say this is another way in which the covid measures did more harm than good. Together with irresponsible mainstream media doom reporting. Why do why I need to ear, every day, that there are X more covid deaths and Y cases? Reduced social interaction, more social media can easily wrongly portray the real world. Even I noticed that as soon as you leave home, tv/computer, and be with friends everything seems less dooming But more than that, I remember being very affected in the 1999/2000, world end prophecies, millennium bug that was going to stop all computers and everyone is going to die. As a child, without internet, it was just TV programs and news reporting, very lightweight and simple, around the family, nothing like the current pandemic or climate doom. Still before going to bed I would be very sad that the world was going to end, everyone was going to die
• hogrider 5y ago
  I don't have any hard numbers as I don't think we measure children suicide very closely here in Argentina, but we had one of the longest lockdowns with remote learning and it seems to be children did ok. I posit existential dread and deaths of dispair, the modern anomie and so on, have something to do with advanced economic development.