
Does inequality cause suicide, drug abuse and mental illness? - ceolin
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/06/14/does-inequality-cause-suicide-drug-abuse-and-mental-illness
======
pmoriarty
This is a very materialistic culture. All around us the story is told that to
be successful and live life to the fullest you have to make a lot of money,
own expensive things, the latest gadgets, sports cars, mansions, be surrounded
by beautiful men/women on your own yacht, etc. Few would deny that people with
such material success "have it made" or are "living the life".

That's what many people's whole lives are focused around. Their families often
pressure them to be (or at least dream of their being) rich doctors or lawyers
(or, more recently, tech billionaires), etc.

If you don't make it in these material ways, for whatever reason, you're often
viewed as a failure, as a loser, still living in mom's basement, and so on.
You might be working at a shitty job, making very little money, being treated
like crap or a replaceable cog, unlikely to ever afford to retire, watching
your family (who are also poor) be bankrupted by medical bills or not being
able to afford the medical treatement and care they need as they grow older.

None of this is likely to help your self-esteem, it might even make you
depressed (surprise!), and when you run in to psychological or physical
difficulties from your decades of working at a no-future job and being treated
like crap while others in the media or in rich areas of town are sipping
cocktails or going vacationing in exotic locales while you continue to sweat
it out at the factory or the call center or the online retail warehouse where
you're even penalized for taking bathroom breaks and can't afford to go on
vaction (if you get any), you might feel like you're on an endless treadmill
and you might actually start to have trouble coping. Imagine that.

~~~
Noos
well, one of the biggest criticisms of materialism is religion, and western
culture has been very good at marginalizing it for the sake of the rich. I
think people are finding out that for all of religion's faults, it acted as a
alternate source of transcendent morality which could help mitigate those
difficulties you describe so well.

Don't worry, the rich will solve it though. Legal weed and other drugs to
sedate and make us listless, and cheap low culture like video games as an
alternate form of meaningless self-medication are their solution. Lot of us
are just being warehoused that way if we wind up losing in the materialistic
culture.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Much of western religion in practice simply legitimised the power of the kings
and nobles. It might have had a lot to say about the evils of materialism but
it rarely addressed the evils inherent in the hierarchical systems of
government and control.

------
everdev
Rarely does X cause Y in all but the simplest of mechanical processes. Rather
X is a contributing factor to Y, when conditions A, B or C are present.

I'm sure inequality boosts suicide rates when depression, fear of the future
(going to jail, an embarrassing truth coming out, etc.) or emotional
distress/trauma are present.

~~~
kryogen1c
This. It's like finding eating fresh vegetables correlates with longer
lifespan, when really people that eat fresh vegetables have higher
socioeconomic status, access to health care, education, etc etc. The leap from
correlation to causation is quite large.

------
gallerdude
I heard an interesting argument that we shouldn't focus on inequality, we
should focus on poverty instead.

Inequality is something easy to get people mad about (something something CEOs
make 300x more), but the real issue that people are worried about is poverty.

------
TangoTrotFox
The thing I find bemusing about works like this is that rarely is any effort
made to even see how consistently, or even if, a hypothesis holds up in other
nations. Instead it seems like the idea is to take the inequality in the US,
find a negative issue in the US, and suggest a link. That's awful science. So
for instance here are two relevant lists.

[1] List of nations by income equality.

[2] List of nations by suicide rate.

There are approximately 180 nations ranked in each. What immediately came to
mind here is South America. They have absolutely raging inequality, but also
negligible suicide rates.

\---

#11 income inequality Brazil #135 suicide rate

#12 income inequality Columbia #135 suicide rate (tied with Brazil)

#13 income inequality Panama #142 suicide rate

#16 income inequality Honduras #155 suicide rate

#17 income inequality Guatemala #174 suicide rate

That alone looks quite damning of any attempt to link income inequality to
suicide. In fact South America in particular shows a very strong link between
high income inequality and low suicide rates! For completeness, these are the
top 5 nations in income inequality and their suicide rates:

\---

#1 income inequality South Africa #54 suicide rate

#2 income inequality Namibia #87 suicide rate

#3 income inequality Haiti #67 suicide rate

#4 income inequality Botswana #48 suicide rate

#5 income inequality Suriname #6 suicide rate

\---

One thing I would add on the suicide rates for the top is this [3]. That's a
list of nations by AIDS/HIV prevalence. South Africa is #4. Namibia is #5.
Haiti #24. Botswana is #3, Suriname #35. That's more than a slight confounding
variable! Perhaps income inequality causes AIDS! Of course that's a tasteless
joke, but the point is the absurdity of correlations.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)

[3] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate)

------
adamnemecek
It also temporarily reduces IQ.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/poverty-
intellige...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/poverty-intelligence-
aging-brain-low-income-inequality-a7333506.html)

------
dominotw
I read somewhere that people who have sex regularly don't commit suicide. Not
sure if it's actually true though. Would be interesting to see if this obvious
intuition is true. Ofcourse it's a chicken and egg problem that depressed ppl
don't want to have sex.

~~~
DanBC
It's not true.

Predicting suicide is hard. Currently the best we have is asking people
whether they think they're going to kill themselves, seeing if they've made
previous attempts or have self harmed in the last year, or seeing if they have
an alcohol misuse problem.

It's true that people with depression experience reduced libido (sometimes
from the illness, but sometimes from the medication), but it would be better
to use depression as a risk factor.

~~~
dominotw
> It's not true.

Sorry but how do you know this?

~~~
olliej
Numerous studies have been made on suicide, frequency of sex isn’t a
discriminating factor in any of them, when you control for other aspects of
their lives.

Suicide is complex and there are different modalities: long term depression vs
sudden stress being the most obvious. You can get a lot of (v sad) data if you
search journal publications on suicide.

Then you have different responses to stress and depression (some engage in
“risky behavior” which can include lots of sex for example). On the other hand
depression has a confirmed hit to sexdrive.

I’m sure on a case by case basis you can get all sorts of variation, but the
net statistics don’t support amount of sex impacting suicidal ideation, nor
ideation (on average) impacting amount of sex.

------
jdc
Could this condition be caused by chronic covetousness?

~~~
sigfubar
You’re getting downvoted for snark, but your question is valid nevertheless.
Most people wouldn’t know why they see value in material things, which leaves
only one possible reason: because someone else has, I must have as well.

~~~
staticautomatic
It's _one_ possible reason but certainly not the _only_ possible reason.

