
Why suicide is falling around the world, and how to bring it down more - robg
https://amp.economist.com/leaders/2018/11/24/why-suicide-is-falling-around-the-world-and-how-to-bring-it-down-more
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AngryData
I don't get how they go from saying poor rural folk that struggle to survive
commit suicide more often and then conclude from it that gun control is a
solution to that problem. That isn't treating the source of the problem at
all. Guns didn't make these people poor and desperate. I would expect any
marginalized and poor group of people to have higher rates of suicide than
normal regardless of their access to dangerous tools or chemicals.

~~~
jackvalentine
Successful suicide is a function of desire and access to means. You can work
on either, or both at the same time.

~~~
vpmpaul
Comments like this make me sigh at the gulf of brilliance and borderline
mental disability of HN.

Literally every single person contemplating suicide has access to means. Every
single one. No matter how much regulation is imposed which is why it is stupid
to attempt to regulate to begin with and usually used as a means to push a
secondary agenda. Even someone strapped to a bed and force fed will eventually
die from the process.

The only cure for suicide it access to mental health assistance and reasonable
living conditions. Even that won't "cure" someone who truly wants to die.

~~~
jackvalentine
I love how you've assumed from my comment a large range of 'secondary agendas'
rather than just the face value of my words.

Also I very much appreciate your bad-faith implication that I have a mental
disability. Thanks for that.

~~~
dang
Please don't get uncivil, just because someone else wrote an uncharitable
comment. It only makes the thread worse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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sharkjacobs
> at a global level, suicide is down by 29% since 2000

> in America is up by 18% since 2000 ... The rise is largely among white,
> middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and
> crushed by busts

> Because farming involves killing things, rural folk are likelier to have the
> means to kill themselves—guns, pesticides—to hand

> Unemployed people kill themselves at around two-and-a-half times the rate of
> those in work

> the most effective measure of all is limiting access to guns. Half of all
> Americans who commit suicide shoot themselves, and the overall rate in
> America is about twice that in Britain, which has strict gun controls. The
> difference in gun ownership largely accounts for the state-by-state
> variation in suicide rates

Unlike the worldwide decline, the rise in America is linked to such a specific
cultural subgroup that I'd love to know how the suicide rates compares between
different populations within America

~~~
b1r6
Britain sounds like a dystopia where I can't find a tool to kill myself.
Remember Bender and the suicide booths? If you're going to take the guns,
please provide some of those.

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kartan
"more curbs on the means of self-destruction"

This means guns. And that is why right now this post is full of mean spirited
comments. It is a shame that cannot be a sincere discussion about guns even
when it relates to suicide and the lives it could save.

~~~
jessewmc
Even if you're pro gun control, it doesn't mean gun control reduces suicides.
You'd have to look at the numbers -- are suicide rates lower in places with
less access to guns? Or do people just commit suicide differently? I strongly
suspect the latter.

Removing means doesn't fix the underlying problems, and it smacks of agenda
pushing to suggest otherwise (even if it's a good agenda).

~~~
cortesoft
People do look at these sorts of numbers all the time, and most of the
evidence points to lower overall suicide rates in places that have stricter
gun control. Of course, it is hard to fully control for all the correlations,
but the available evidence does point towards fewer guns == fewer suicides.

The general explanation is that many suicides are somewhat spur of the moment,
and access to an easy way to kill yourself when you have those moments of
weakness increases the chance that a person will follow through. People have
this sense that suicides are well thought out decisions that people make when
they conclude that their life isn't worth living anymore, but that isn't the
case most of the time.

[https://www.rand.org/research/gun-
policy/analysis/supplement...](https://www.rand.org/research/gun-
policy/analysis/supplementary/firearm-availability-suicide.html)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-firearms-
suicides/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-firearms-
suicides/strict-state-gun-laws-linked-to-fewer-suicides-and-murders-
idUSKBN1GH39W)

~~~
nkurz
Thanks for the links. The RAND paper is really good; the Reuters article less
so. While your summary seems true, I think a better summary might be "despite
many studies, none have found evidence for a full substitution effect". That
is, in studies that show a drop in firearm suicides, there is almost always a
drop in overall suicide rates as well. The degree to which changing from an
existing lax gun control regime to a stricter one results in a lower firearm
suicide rate is harder to establish, but in at least some cases for some
populations it's probably a positive effect.

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mjevans
The statistic about bridge jump survivors seems improperly researched. It
ignores the literal survivor bias as well as the fact that survivors probably
had access to many things that they didn't before the jump.

    
    
        * A memory of how painful and fearful they were while in the act.
        * Actual medical treatment and resources.
        * Awareness in those they know and work with.
        * Maybe, a more stable place in their community.
    

It would be FAR more illustrative to contrast the 94% of survivors that
persisted against the 6% who took another path. That would provide an
extremely strong retrospective view about effective means of preventing
"remission" and, quite plausibly, initial incidence.

------
malvosenior
> _The suicide rate in America is up by 18% since 2000. This is not merely a
> tragedy; it matters politically, too. The rise is largely among white,
> middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and
> crushed by busts. Their deaths are a symptom of troubles to which some see
> President Donald Trump as the answer. Those troubles should not be ignored._

And yet they are ignored, time and time again. Even mentioning that men could
have a problem that society could help solve will be met with great
resistance. As we know, there's a never ending effort to get women into stem,
to empower girls, to elevate women in society. Which _can_ be good but it
seems the pendulum has swung so far in that direction that men are now viewed
as "the problem". It seems to me that technology is one of the last areas
where men actually succeed but there's a great deal of effort put into place
to remove that success.

Women now outnumber men greatly in university. Is there a point where we
collectively step back and acknowledge the great gains women have had in
society; so great that they now have a very real advantage over men?

In addition to suicide, men are imprisoned at a much higher level than women:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Gender)

This seems like a problem at least worth acknowledging.

~~~
save_ferris
> Is there a point where we collectively step back and acknowledge the great
> gains women have had in society; so great that they now have a very real
> advantage over men?

What evidence do you have to support this? Women are still underpaid compared
to their male counterparts for doing the exact same work, which SCOTUS
recently ruled was perfectly legal.

Women are still underrepresented in managerial and executive roles across the
Fortune 500 and beyond, and have only begun making real gains in high-level US
gov positions.

How exactly is the increasing rate of women in university contributing to the
problem of poorly-educated white men committing suicide at a higher rate?

~~~
malvosenior
> _What evidence do you have to support this?_

This article is about how male suicide is on the rise in the US. That is
evidence. I also linked to male incarceration rates vs. female.

> _Women are still underpaid compared to their male counterparts for doing the
> exact same work_

This is simply not true and I challenge you to provide data to back up this
assertion.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-
buy...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy-into-the-
gender-pay-gap-myth)

> _How exactly is the increasing rate of women in university contributing to
> the problem of poorly-educated white men committing suicide at a higher
> rate?_

Do you think they are totally unconnected? Is it not worth examining? Do you
think male suicide and incarceration rates are even a problem worth looking
into?

~~~
krapp
>This article is about how male suicide is on the rise in the US. That is
evidence.

This article is about how suicide among various groups is _falling_ , and it
mentions as a counterpoint the rise in suicides by "white, middle-aged, poorly
educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts".
Nowhere in the article is it implied that male suicide is on the rise in the
US as a result of the power women have over men in society.

For that matter, you haven't proven that the increase in proportional
incarcerations of males versus females is due to the power women have over men
in society (vis a vis, I assume, the legal system) either, rather than men
committing more crimes than women.

If you're going to challenge others to back up their assertions at least back
up your own.

~~~
malvosenior
I'm saying that men don't have a very good place in US society as evidenced by
suicide, lack of university enrollment and incarceration. At no point did I
suggest that women have power over men. I see the problem as women's issues
are being dealt with (often at the expense of men) while men's issues are a
taboo that you can't even speak about. I'll use the voting performance of
comments in this thread as further evidence that you can't even suggest that
men might be in trouble without meeting great resistance.

~~~
krapp
>I'm saying that men don't have a very good place in US society as evidenced
by suicide, lack of university enrollment and incarceration.

>. At no point did I suggest that women have power over men.

"Is there a point where we collectively step back and acknowledge the great
gains women have had in society; so great that they now have a very real
advantage over men?"

------
darren0
This article is just an opinion piece and junk at that. If they have any data
they fail to properly cite it beyond their own economist article which also
fails to properly cite sources. I find this so frustrating when reading
articles these days. All to often they just write "in a recent study ..." with
no mention of what the study is, who did it, or a link for you to read it.

Suicide is a huge problem and very complex topic and this article answers to
"Why" are quite flippant.

~~~
jameskegel
If this comment gets any more grey I should probably leave HN because all
logic is gone, and we are just voting based on emotions now.

Folks let’s get back back on tech and leave the politics to those with time
for unproductive discussion.

~~~
grzm
Submit articles you think are appropriate. Flag those you think are
inappropriate for the site. Act within the guidelines by not complaining about
those that you think aren't right for discussion on HN.

> _" Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is
> spam or off-topic, flag it. If you flag something, please don't also comment
> that you did."_

Similarly, _" Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does
any good, and it makes boring reading."_

I suspect the downvotes for your parent are in response to them thinking the
comment isn't in line with the guidelines. Commenting as they did often
attracts attention to the comment and leads to worse discussion.

------
jahaja
Thinking about the Bertrand Russell quote: "Drunkenness is temporary suicide",
and wondering about the correlation between ~70k drug related deaths per year
and this topics ~40k suicides per year. Would suicides increase if the easy
access to palliatives would be stopped? Or would they decrease because it may
be the drugs themselves that drags people down? I assume that the latter
happens, but it seems to me that there's a root cause there before the heavy
drugs exacerbates it.

------
aligshow
suicide should be increased, suicide = freedom and that means more suicide
means more freedom

------
chris_wot
They are wrong. Suicide rates in Australia rose in 2017.

~~~
alangpierce
The article also mentions that suicide rates have gone up in the United States
in recent years. It's not saying that every country has had a decreasing rate
of suicides, it's saying that the global rate is going down.

