3 ms·

Assuming a predominantly male population, the suicide rate should be around 20 per 100000 per year. 5 people in a month gives 18x higher rate. Too short period

Assuming a predominantly male population, the suicide rate should be around 20 per 100000 per year. 5 people in a month gives 18x higher rate. Too short period to draw any statistical conclusions but it’s a large blip.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
dcanelhas 2mo ago
The suicide rate isn't uniformly distributed given gender. There are likely screenings (previous mental health history) and rejection of the most affected age group (70+) that should lead the baseline to be even lower. Meaning 18x is probably on the low end.
- paulmist 2mo ago
  Definitely a rough estimate! I recon base rate is also higher amongst military personnel & it’s not uniformly distributed there either.
acdha 2mo ago
I think you’d have some statistical complications around stress: beyond the inherent pressure of the job itself, it’s highly likely that they were understaffed even before losing a lot of support when the DOGE chainsaws were in “cut first, measure later” mode — I know multiple people in the military who are still running at like half productivity because telework was cancelled so everyone’s day is a couple hours longer commuting into an office where they’re sitting on the floor because there aren’t enough desks — and if they were married to another federal employee they might be dealing with loss of income or childcare (DOGE closed the GSA office which handled that, apparently to pressure parents into resigning) at the same time.
- inference-god 2mo ago
  It's wild to think how many indirect deaths Elon Musk and his "chainsaw" must be responsible for. I recently saw an interview and he was asked the question and he said "not a single death"...a true psychopath.
jandrewrogers 2mo ago
This particular population is highly selected because of the work they do and the types of clearances they hold. I would expect the suicide rate to differ significantly from the general population.
hylaride 2mo ago
Stress, PTSD, and overwork can and do aggravate mental health issues. All of these are probably hitting these people - probably at the same time.
harimau777 2mo ago
I think that it would be necessary to correct for things like income and education level since engineers in cyber command are likely not representative of the general public.
- raffael_de 2mo ago
  i'm pretty sure that segment has lower than average suicide rate. well paid, well educated.
  - y-curious 2mo ago
    I agree with you generally but a lot of professions that are well-paid and educated still have high rates. Dentists, for example, are 2x the general population
    - raffael_de 2mo ago
      most medical professions have higher rate. it's usually attributed to being constantly subjected to pain and suffering plus physicians can source pharmaceuticals to exit softly. never heard that it professionals are particularly prone to suicide.
- Detrytus 2mo ago
  The main thing they should correct for is "how much China and Russia want them dead, and can they make it look like a suicide"?
moustache_hn 2mo ago
[flagged]
Rebelgecko 2mo ago
Suicides are not independent statistical events and sadly often come in "clusters"
davesque 2mo ago
That's not saying much. The real distribution is probably heavily skewed by risk factors such as poverty, age, drug abuse, etc.
AussieWog93 2mo ago
I mean, let's be real for a second. It's cybersecurity. Yes, it does skew male, but you're probably looking at 10x the standard population density of Autistics, and 20x the density of trans women. I'm sure there are other "sociologically valid" ways you can measure this too, but there is absolutely a correlation between having the type of brain that is able to perform offensive cybersecurity operations and mental illness/social rejection/isolation.
getnormality 2mo ago
From a life spent on count statistics, one thing I think is interesting is how definitively you can reject perfect randomness from a very small sample like this. The expected event count from 17,000 people exposed to a month of constant uniform event risk with an annual hazard rate of 20 per 100,000 per year is 0.28. The p-value for observing a count of 5 from a (Poissonian) mean of 0.28 is 1 in 100,000. So it's pretty unlikely by perfect random chance. The other thing you see in a life spent in count statistics is a lot of statistically extreme events that turn out to have no deep or predictive significance.
- chmod775 2mo ago
  You hinted at this in your last sentence, so I assume you're aware, but I feel like spelling it out anyways: There's many slices of ~10-20k people you can divide the US (military) in, many of them overlapping. What is the chance that in some year at least one of the slices will say "Hey, we had excess suicides!" - much higher.
  - getnormality 2mo ago
    Maybe the real reason that small sample sizes don't tell you anything is because there's tons of small samples in the world, and the particular one you're looking at has almost certainly been selected for unusualness. It's a multiple comparison problem that you don't know is a multiple comparison problem because you yourself didn't do the comparisons. You just got the result of them.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

dcanelhas 2mo ago

The suicide rate isn't uniformly distributed given gender. There are likely screenings (previous mental health history) and rejection of the most affected age group (70+) that should lead the baseline to be even lower. Meaning 18x is probably on the low end.

paulmist 2mo ago
Definitely a rough estimate! I recon base rate is also higher amongst military personnel & it’s not uniformly distributed there either.

acdha 2mo ago

I think you’d have some statistical complications around stress: beyond the inherent pressure of the job itself, it’s highly likely that they were understaffed even before losing a lot of support when the DOGE chainsaws were in “cut first, measure later” mode — I know multiple people in the military who are still running at like half productivity because telework was cancelled so everyone’s day is a couple hours longer commuting into an office where they’re sitting on the floor because there aren’t enough desks — and if they were married to another federal employee they might be dealing with loss of income or childcare (DOGE closed the GSA office which handled that, apparently to pressure parents into resigning) at the same time.

inference-god 2mo ago
It's wild to think how many indirect deaths Elon Musk and his "chainsaw" must be responsible for. I recently saw an interview and he was asked the question and he said "not a single death"...a true psychopath.

jandrewrogers 2mo ago

This particular population is highly selected because of the work they do and the types of clearances they hold. I would expect the suicide rate to differ significantly from the general population.

hylaride 2mo ago

Stress, PTSD, and overwork can and do aggravate mental health issues. All of these are probably hitting these people - probably at the same time.

harimau777 2mo ago

I think that it would be necessary to correct for things like income and education level since engineers in cyber command are likely not representative of the general public.

raffael_de 2mo ago
i'm pretty sure that segment has lower than average suicide rate. well paid, well educated.
- y-curious 2mo ago
  I agree with you generally but a lot of professions that are well-paid and educated still have high rates. Dentists, for example, are 2x the general population
  - raffael_de 2mo ago
    most medical professions have higher rate. it's usually attributed to being constantly subjected to pain and suffering plus physicians can source pharmaceuticals to exit softly. never heard that it professionals are particularly prone to suicide.
Detrytus 2mo ago
The main thing they should correct for is "how much China and Russia want them dead, and can they make it look like a suicide"?

moustache_hn 2mo ago

[flagged]

Rebelgecko 2mo ago

Suicides are not independent statistical events and sadly often come in "clusters"

davesque 2mo ago

That's not saying much. The real distribution is probably heavily skewed by risk factors such as poverty, age, drug abuse, etc.

AussieWog93 2mo ago

I mean, let's be real for a second. It's cybersecurity. Yes, it does skew male, but you're probably looking at 10x the standard population density of Autistics, and 20x the density of trans women. I'm sure there are other "sociologically valid" ways you can measure this too, but there is absolutely a correlation between having the type of brain that is able to perform offensive cybersecurity operations and mental illness/social rejection/isolation.

getnormality 2mo ago

From a life spent on count statistics, one thing I think is interesting is how definitively you can reject perfect randomness from a very small sample like this. The expected event count from 17,000 people exposed to a month of constant uniform event risk with an annual hazard rate of 20 per 100,000 per year is 0.28. The p-value for observing a count of 5 from a (Poissonian) mean of 0.28 is 1 in 100,000. So it's pretty unlikely by perfect random chance. The other thing you see in a life spent in count statistics is a lot of statistically extreme events that turn out to have no deep or predictive significance.

chmod775 2mo ago
You hinted at this in your last sentence, so I assume you're aware, but I feel like spelling it out anyways: There's many slices of ~10-20k people you can divide the US (military) in, many of them overlapping. What is the chance that in some year at least one of the slices will say "Hey, we had excess suicides!" - much higher.
- getnormality 2mo ago
  Maybe the real reason that small sample sizes don't tell you anything is because there's tons of small samples in the world, and the particular one you're looking at has almost certainly been selected for unusualness. It's a multiple comparison problem that you don't know is a multiple comparison problem because you yourself didn't do the comparisons. You just got the result of them.