
Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in U.S. - uladzislau
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/health/suicide-rate-rises-sharply-in-us.html
======
mindcrime
_“The boomers had great expectations for what their life might look like, but
I think perhaps it hasn’t panned out that way,”_

Very true for GenX as well, in my experience. Speaking from my own experience
as a member of that group, I think we all thought we would have more of a
positive impact on the world, than what we have had to date. For all the talk
about how we were just disaffected, lazy whiners back when most of us were
teenagers, this generation always had a lot of optimism and a lot of drive to
effect social change, from what I saw.

Now, we are creeping up on middle age (I'll turn 40 this year myself) and the
world doesn't really look any better in a lot of ways, and looks worse in
some. :-(

On a personal level, I don't really expect to commit suicide, but I'll freely
admit that there is a "background thread" that fires and mulls the possibility
from time to time. I haven't really accomplished shit compared to my
expectations for myself on an individual level, and as age catches up with me,
the idea seems more reasonable. I have a vague notion that if this current
startup doesn't succeed, I may pull a _"Leaving Las Vegas"_ deal and checkout
that way.

I prefer to take an optimistic view though... The startup is going to succeed,
make us all very wealthy, and I'll live out my final years on a yacht in the
Carribean, being tended to by a bevy of beautiful young redheads who like rich
old guys. :-)

~~~
grecy
I highly, highly recommend you take a couple of years off, and go and see what
the rest of the world has to offer.

You'll be shocked how many hundreds of millions of people out there have way
less money and stuff than you, but are massively happier with their lives.

(I personally took two years to drive from Alaska to Argentina, I'll never be
the same person again. <http://theroadchoseme.com>)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
But the key to being happy with way less money and stuff is to be secure in
the money and stuff you _do_ have, which Americans overwhelmingly are not. You
can have a whole lot of stuff, but get laid off... miss a payment... and it
all comes crashing down.

~~~
jseliger
_But the key to being happy with way less money and stuff is to be secure in
the money and stuff you do have, which Americans overwhelmingly are not._

Actually, Daniel Gilbert's book _Stumbling on Happiness_ and Jonathan Haidt's
book _The Happiness Hypothesis_ both point to the idea that social connections
and finding meaning one's relationships are the key to being happy—much more
so than material possessions.

That being said, it does appear that many if not most Americans spend too much
on things they think will make them happy but don't—see _Spend_ by Geoffrey
Miller for more on this idea. It's as if we're hanging ourselves through our
own failures to understand ourselves.

------
tokenadult
"The most pronounced increases were seen among men in their 50s, a group in
which suicide rates jumped by nearly 50 percent, to about 30 per 100,000."

As an American man in his fifties, I find this a startling statistic. This
suggests that there may be a cohort effect that makes the Baby Boom generation
more vulnerable to middle-age suicide than preceding generations of Americans.

~~~
DanBC
Older people tend to have more medication around the home. Access to means and
methods is a risk factor for suicide, thus having meds == increased risk for
attempted and completed suicide.

I really want to avoid gun control debate, but having access to guns is a
significant risk factor for completed suicide.

Also, in women, lesbians tend to complete suicide in their 40s and 50s rather
than their teens. At least, that's the case in the UK.

Here's the UK University of Oxford Centre for Suicide research
(<http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/>) which has lots of information about
suicide and deliberate self harm.

~~~
mindcrime
_I really want to avoid gun control debate, but having access to guns is a
significant risk factor for completed suicide._

It's an interesting question whether or not this should even be part of the
gun control debate. IF, if, you accept the idea of a "right to die" (I do,
FWIW), then people who voluntarily choose to end their lives using a firearm
should not be counted as "gun deaths" in anything like the same way as
homicides, or even accidental deaths.

Now granted, that's a controversial topic in it's own right, but it's
something to consider. If somebody choose to die, does it really matter how
they do it?

Of course, it also raises the issue of whether or not people who (try to)
commit suicide really want to die or not, or are just "looking for help" or
whatever the phrase is. I don't really have a stand on that.

~~~
tptacek
Suicidal depression is an illness, no less so than cancer; when people get
cancer, we try hard to keep it from being fatal. We don't chalk cancer
fatalities up to the body's right to succumb to entropy.

Some subset of suicides are "right to die" cases, but given the prevalence of
clinical depression, the notion that _most_ suicides are the result of
rational decisionmaking and not illness is an extraordinary claim requiring
extraordinary evidence.

~~~
eurleif
But if I'm worried that I might become suicidally depressed in the future, and
I don't want to have ready access to a gun, I can choose not to buy one. I
don't think it's the government's job to protect me from myself.

~~~
tptacek
I don't care about the gun control debate; HN is a terrible venue for it. Some
of my close friends are gun enthusiasts, others gun-control activists. I don't
think any less of people who disagree with me about guns and think of it as
one of the better examples of a "reasonable people can disagree" discussion
(which, ironically, tend to be the worst kinds of discussions for HN).

I do care about misconceptions about suicidal depression, since depression is
a serious risk for the community of people that use HN.

------
guard-of-terra
"Suicide rates among middle-age Americans have risen sharply in the past
decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced
years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be
particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm"

I don't live in the USA, but are't baby boomers supposed to be older than
"middle-age" now?

~~~
omni
They are using the term "middle-aged" to describe a person between the ages of
35 and 64.[1] The "Baby Boom" is generally described as having occurred
between 1946 and 1964.[2] Therefore, there will still be middle-aged Baby
Boomers until 2029.

[1]:
[http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6217a1.htm?s_cid=...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6217a1.htm?s_cid=mm6217a1_w)
[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_baby_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_baby_boom#Definition_of_the_boom_years)

------
Alex3917
Compared to those born between 1900 and 1931, Americans born between 1962 and
1978 were 3 times more likely to have grown up in severely abusive homes, 5
time more likely to have attempted suicide, 4.5 times more like to have
contracted a sexually transmitted disease, 50% more likely to have suffered
depression, and 50% more likely to have experienced alcohol addiction.

Source:
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743503...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743503001233)

~~~
RexRollman
Couldn't some of that just be that we've have gotten better at diagnosing some
of those things?

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downandout
Advances in technology have eliminated or drastically changed many of the jobs
these people have, and there is no end in sight. As a result, there is no
economic opportunity for many of them. In modern society, that leaves few
options. While many suicides can be attributed to mental illness or
depression, an increasing number of them fall within the definition of
"rational suicide".

Fewer people can now serve the needs of far more people than ever before
possible. For example, we are rapidly approaching the day when humans will no
longer be involved in many forms of construction, and most of those jobs won't
be replaced in any other field. Millions of manual labor jobs worldwide can be
replaced by a relatively small number of engineers in a single location
working to automate those tasks. As our world catapults toward this reality,
unemployment and the resulting suicide rate can only increase.

~~~
iknowno_one
Excellently put, the solution in the short term is counseling and creating a
culture in which down-time, leisure and enjoyment of life is prized more than
"putting in your hours."

The purpose of automation is to make our lives easier. We have to think that a
bum living on the street is not a drain on society, in a lot of ways he is
doing more "work" just to keep himself alive than the average wage-slave. We
need to stop thinking that "work" is somehow the goal of a person's life and
transition to "enjoyment" being the goal.

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rhizome
There's a story like this 3mos after every high-profile suicide to garner some
sales (papers, pageviews) via predictable copycat trends.

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D9u
I wonder what percentage of suicides are military, or veterans?

