[HN Gopher] Our World in Data: Suicide
___________________________________________________________________
Our World in Data: Suicide
Author : tosh
Score : 101 points
Date : 2020-08-06 12:05 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ourworldindata.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ourworldindata.org)
| roenxi wrote:
| It is easy to like ourworldindata.org - breaking the data out by
| age is most welcome. Suicide at 80 has a very different meaning
| than suicide at 18.
|
| A grim thought is that in an ideal world there would be a large
| number of deaths by suicide. Many of the people I know who are in
| favour of euthanasia have had to watch someone die wasting away
| from cancer. There are bad ways to die.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _A grim thought is that in an ideal world there would be a
| large number of deaths by suicide._
|
| But most deaths by suicide aren't self-inflicted euthanasia to
| avoid a dicease, but escapes from depression, the impact of far
| from ideal social/family/economical circumstances, and so on.
|
| I doubt the number would change much is euthanasia was legal
| everywhere, and even if it did, it would just be toward the end
| of the battle (with e.g. cancer), where those people would have
| died soon anyway.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Suicide and euthanasia should be treated as separate causes of
| death
| csunbird wrote:
| In a philosophical point, aren't all suicides are euthanasia?
|
| People suicide because they are suffering and they do not see
| any other way out to end the suffering.
|
| Edit: I know that there are problems that can be fixed and
| problems that can not, but in their perspective, nothing
| works.
| Someone wrote:
| The "eu" in euthanasia means "good", "thanasia" means
| death.
|
| So, that statement would say _"aren't all suicides good
| deaths?"_
|
| I don't and cannot believe that.
| csunbird wrote:
| I actually did not know the actual meaning of the word.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time suicidal. I'm happy to see this
| discussion recognizing that people are suicidal because
| they are suffering.
|
| But suicide is often a rash decision because you are
| currently miserable and if you knew that you wouldn't be
| miserable tomorrow morning, you probably wouldn't do it. In
| contrast, euthansia is a more logically sound decision that
| "This is not going to get better and I'm not interested in
| enduring where it goes from here."
|
| I know there's a difference because I've been through
| experiences where I was physically miserable but clear-
| headed and rational and realized this was a short-term
| thing that would soon resolve, but was physically miserable
| enough that if I had not been absolutely certain it would
| resolve within a matter of hours, I would have been
| suicidal. I have also been mentally screwed up at times and
| lacked that kind of clear thinking.
|
| It's hard to effectively articulate the difference, but
| when I'm not rational, I can tell my adult sons and let
| them know it's not safe to leave me alone today. (It's been
| a while since I've had such an incident. Being back in
| housing has been good for both my general level of
| suffering and my mental stability.)
| csunbird wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this.
|
| I think that, you were clear headed - and that was the
| difference. My personal experience/anecdote with suicide
| (not me, but I was involved in the recovery), the person
| were not able to think clearly, even if their problems
| were fixable and _they knew_ that the problems were
| _fixable_ but required too much effort, just wanted it to
| end.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I have attempted suicide once and been hospitalized on a
| suicide watch twice. My adult sons, now in their
| thirties, are abundantly familiar with the medical and
| other issues that fuel my suicidal tendencies and were
| raised with excellent rubrics for how to handle it.
|
| Some things I've said before that bear repeating:
|
| If you know someone who is suicidal, help them deal with
| their actual problems instead of dismissing their
| suicidal tendencies as "they just have a mental health
| issue." Suicidal ideation is often rooted in serious,
| intractable personal problems. Acting like they are
| merely crazy actively pushes people over the edge. (It's
| basically a form of gaslighting.)
|
| There are generally two elements to any mental health
| issue, like suicidal ideation or depression. One is
| physical and the other is social or situational.
|
| When you have reason to believe someone is under physical
| duress, you may be able to mitigate their current crisis
| by feeding them, making sure they are adequately warm or
| cool, making sure they are hydrated and helping them get
| some sleep. If you tend to their physical needs, they may
| wake up tomorrow feeling more stable.
|
| If someone is clearly irrational, do not argue with them
| about whatever they are saying. Do not engage with their
| crazy talk. It only puts out the fire with gasoline.
| There is no good reply to something like that because
| agreeing helps push them over the edge and disagreeing
| will typically not convince them of anything but will
| help make them feel disrespected, unheard and like no one
| cares.
|
| Instead, try to help them find distraction or otherwise
| engage in care-taking. Resist the temptation to focus on
| the lurid detail that they are suicidal and talking about
| negative things.
|
| Don't try to shut them down. If they want to talk, let
| them talk, just don't reply to it in a way that adds fuel
| to the fire. It shouldn't be forbidden for them to talk
| about feeling suicidal.
|
| If you have no idea how to reply, it's okay to say that.
| It's generally vastly better to say something like "I
| feel out of my depth here and I don't know what a good
| response is." than to ignore it or pretend you do know
| what you are doing.
| csunbird wrote:
| Agreed. I have a background of depression too, so I was
| able to sympathize with the person but not on that level.
| Most of my help was just being there for them and taking
| care of them, and the idea of somebody is there for them
| was clearly helping.
|
| We got medical help for the recovery, not in the drugs
| way, but a professional with the experience of dealing
| with the kind of problems the person had.
|
| Our job was to keep them going with their lives. That was
| it. Feeling of being cared and loved allowed them to get
| professional help that they would not seek otherwise.
| bloak wrote:
| I'm not sure how you'd distinguish them, particularly in a
| consistent way for different countries.
| Angostura wrote:
| Countries where euthanasia is legal have strict frameworks
| surrounding the procedure - being signed off by multiple
| doctors in advance, for example.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| In the Netherlands it would be easy, because it is legal.
| There is a registration process.
|
| Euthanasia involves other people in the planning. Suicide
| does not.
| KONAir wrote:
| Wouldn't "result of a medical discussion" (as in expert
| opinion of no way to improve life quality of a terminal
| patient) vs "personal decision" (made independently by
| person for variety of other reasons) fit better?
|
| Procedure vs independent act?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I agree
| dkarl wrote:
| I think there should be legal medical euthanasia/suicide,
| treated as the same thing (same cause of death) whether it is
| done with the patient's active participation or done to
| comply with their previously legally established wish to be
| killed under certain circumstances.
|
| Suicide done outside this process should be treated
| differently.
| duopixel wrote:
| > breaking the data out by age is most welcome. Suicide at 80
| has a very different meaning than suicide at 18.
|
| I find it frustrating they cluster suicides ages 14 to 59,
| why!?
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Personally, my fear is wasting away due to some form of
| degenerative brain disease. I think I could put up with all
| sorts of other disabilities due to age, but at the moment that
| I realize some pathogen is attacking the core of my being and
| I'm going to slowly lose who I am, I don't want to be forced to
| continue. I especially don't want the rest of my friends and
| family to watch me waste away in front of them while I forget
| who they are, lose control of my bodily functions... what a
| horrible way to go. I'd much rather bow out peacefully, while I
| can still do so with dignity. When my time is up it's no
| tragedy for me to move on, it's simply the next generation's
| turn.
|
| It's a touchy subject for sure, but this is where I draw my
| personal line in the sand. Many others have a different set of
| opinions, and I'm not convinced there's one right answer. Just
| food for thought.
| Kednicma wrote:
| Firearm owners are primarily a danger to themselves, followed by
| those close to them. Our long-standing epidemic of firearm-
| induced suicide could be tempered by better gun regulation.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Our long-standing epidemic of firearm-induced suicide could
| be tempered by better gun regulation._
|
| Are you implying that a significant number of firearm suicides
| are done with _illegal_ firearms? I 'm skeptical of that, being
| from Canada. If not, what would more regulation do?
| kiba wrote:
| Legal ownership doesn't implies training.
| logicchains wrote:
| From the graphs there it doesn't seem like there's a
| correlation between national gun ownership and suicide rates.
| simion314 wrote:
| It could also depend on how handy the guns are. If people on
| certain countries keep their guns locked then teens can just
| grab them and do bad stuff with them where in some other
| countries the kids can just go and grab the shotgun(I seen on
| a YT video where a popular guy, engineer not some farmer,
| sends his kid to go and grab his gun )
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _engineer not some farmer_
|
| Can you explain what you mean by this? Is the engineer
| supposed to be "too smart" to allow his children to handle
| guns?
| simion314 wrote:
| I was expecting that more educated people are more aware
| of the risk of having guns in the home not locked. Mainly
| I was thinking that someone would reply that I probably
| seen some rare case on YT and most people are locking
| their guns.
| chmod775 wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#gun-prevalence
| logicchains wrote:
| That's within America, not a comparison of national rates.
| In spite of America having a much higher gun ownership rate
| than other countries it doesn't appear to have a
| particularly high suicide rate.
| dasudasu wrote:
| It doesn't, but it would likely be even lower still
| without guns. Owning a gun is a risk factor for impulsive
| suicides particularly.
| Kednicma wrote:
| Go compare the USA and its suicide, gun ownership, and
| veteran rates, as a composite metric, with Switzerland
| and Israel, which I'm choosing because they're rich
| democracies with mandatory military service and
| relatively high rates of gun ownership; one is very
| reserved, one is more aggressive than the USA, and
| neither has the endemic problem of military veterans
| using service-issued firearms to commit suicide.
|
| I found [0] to be a decent introduction to the problem;
| one needs to take a birds-eye view in order to see it.
|
| [0] https://everytownresearch.org/report/those-who-serve-
| address...
| watwut wrote:
| The big difference is that American veterans are more
| likely to be people deployed into combat zone for
| extensive length of time. Also, being American soldier
| affects your family situation quite a lot - they have
| much higher rates of divorces then general population.
|
| The mandatory military service in Switzerland is not
| comparable to being American soldier.
| akvadrako wrote:
| The graph I think you're pointing to is about "suicide by
| firearm", not "suicide rates" in general.
|
| Of course with fewer guns people will choose other methods.
| James_Henry wrote:
| Perhaps the paper the graph is taken from would be
| helpful? https://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/BriggsTabarrokFi
| rearmsSuicid...
|
| They go through several different models and their
| findings that gun ownership is associated with suicide in
| the US seem rather robust.
|
| There is a lot more to suicide of course: divorce,
| depression, alcohol use and more.
| roenxi wrote:
| > their findings that gun ownership is associated with
| suicide in the US seem rather robust.
|
| Robust is a strong word for that finding. I haven't read
| the paper extremely closely but page 13 suggests they
| have a 16 variable linear factor regression for 150
| observations. With that sort of model a small but
| statistically detectable correlation isn't the sort of
| result that ends arguments.
|
| Realistically it should be discarded out of hand as a
| evidence for any sort of action; the effect is too small
| and there are too many ways that result could be
| misleading for both practical and statistical reasons.
| chmod775 wrote:
| I meant to point to the paragraph next to it:
|
| > (ii) firearms are also strongly related to overall
| suicides - despite evidence for substantial substitution
| in method of suicide;
| gvd wrote:
| Correct. But we all know Americans aren't responsible
| citizens
| bloak wrote:
| I wouldn't really expect to see such a correlation because
| there are certainly other factors that have a significantly
| greater effect on suicide rates and there aren't that many
| independent countries (so you can't accurately measure from
| such a small "sample" of "possible" countries) and gun
| ownership isn't independent of other factors that are known
| to influence suicide rates: for example, the suicide rate
| tends to fall (I've been told) during armed conflicts while
| there is probably a positive correlation between gun
| ownership and armed conflicts.
|
| Probably you could reduce the suicide rate in a US State by
| (further) restricting gun ownership though it's anyone's
| guess by how much and it probably wouldn't make a huge
| difference, I would guess.
| James_Henry wrote:
| Here is a paper that tries to get something of an estimate
| of how much restricting gun ownership would decrease
| suicide.
|
| https://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/BriggsTabarrokFirearmsSuici
| d...
|
| It's not perfect, of course, but probably better than a
| random guess.
| curo wrote:
| Any ideas on why income inequality has a __negative __correlation
| with suicide mortality?
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-rate-vs-income-in...
|
| EDIT: responding to the spurious & not a good fit comments, the
| correlation in 2015 (the first year with good data) is -0.41
| (n=64)
| andrepd wrote:
| May be a spurious correlation.
| curo wrote:
| -0.41 for 65 countries with data in 2015 (most recent year)
| roenxi wrote:
| That doesn't mean it isn't spurious. Spurious just means
| that there isn't a causal relation between the two
| variables (in either direction).
|
| Check the wiki page; there are some examples there that
| will make the argument about as eloquently as HN comments.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_correlation
| curo wrote:
| ah got it, thanks for the link
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Pure speculation but likely reasons could include bad data,
| traditional societies with lesser pressure to "succeed" and
| actually developing countries that give opportunities.
|
| However the correlation is not strong enough as evidenced by
| Egypt and Pakistan.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| Stoicism would be my guess. Remember emotions are relative -
| having something bad happen won't necessarily cause as large an
| emotional response if you are used to bad things happening to
| you.
| curo wrote:
| that makes sense, the higher the fall; the harder the impact.
| Related to this, I think the social nets in poorer countries
| are stronger so the fall isn't as rough.
|
| All that said, this is inequality not income.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| >All that said, this is inequality not income.
|
| Inequality is unfair. The more unfairness someone has to
| put up with the less sensitive they will be to other
| stressors and perceived unfairness.
|
| This obviously isn't as simple as I'm making out.
| Individual people will have different stressors. However
| when we talk large scale I think this simplistic view can
| be warranted.
| [deleted]
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The more secular countries tend to be both more equal and
| having people not worried about eternal damnation if they kill
| themselves.
| addHocker wrote:
| Cause beeing poor can force you to stick together, and with
| relative richness, we are alone and divided with our choices.
| swebs wrote:
| This comment has been flagged for some reason, but I've also
| noticed the same thing anecdotally.
| mthoms wrote:
| Suicide mortality _might_ be correlated with geographic
| location (roughly speaking: latitude) rather than (or in
| addition to) income inequality.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is interesting given that it seems in a lot of ways, overall
| trends did not change much since Carlin did hit special on
| suicides ( men do it more often than women, US leads with guns
| suicides ) suggesting it is something stable within the human
| population. Maybe it is a built-in way for basic population
| control.
|
| But suicides are interesting topic to me all in the themselves.
|
| Personally, I have no problem with suicide since I see it as a
| personal choice ( as in my body, my right to die ). It seems most
| people object based on how it affects them. Very selfish.
| crystaln wrote:
| Any data yet on how covid has affected suicide rates?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Encouraged! Suicide, even ignoring heart disease and cancer, is
| down around #13 as cause of death worldwide. Homicide even lower.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Why is that encouraging? That's horrifying...
| DanBC wrote:
| There are a lot of problems with this webpage.
|
| (EDIT: I am a bit wrong here, and I'm grateful to mthoms below
| for pointing it out!)
|
| It doesn't tell you how each country defines a death by suicide.
| It doesn't tell you if that definition has changed over time. It
| doesn't tell you whether they tried, nor how they've tried, to
| correct for different definitions of suicide. It talks about age-
| standardised rates, but doesn't tell you how they standardised
| for age. And then it puts it all together in very authoritative
| graphs and charts and invites the audience to draw conclusions
| and create a narrative and over-interpet the data.
|
| "This country has a high suicide rate because of school
| pressure"; "that country has a high rate because there are lots
| of lonely young men", "this country has huge problems with
| alcohol dependency so of course their rate is higher". These may
| be true, but we can't tell from OurWorldInData.
|
| I urge you to be cautious when reading this data, especially if
| you're comparing one country to another.
| mthoms wrote:
| The page does address the issues you speak of [0]. Having said
| that, I do agree that the disclaimer is critically important
| and should probably be placed at the beginning rather than the
| end of the document.
|
| [0] https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#data-quality
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yup, this is a big issue in US data where a leading cause of
| death for otherwise-healthy age groups is "accidental
| poisoning" which is CDC-NCHS code for drug overdoses.
| zxkc wrote:
| Some of these charts could really benefit in readability from a
| log transform on one or both axes. For example, the male vs
| female suicide rate chart.
| lettergram wrote:
| My sound strange, but I'm encouraged by these numbers.
|
| Personally, I think it's super unfortunate people choose to
| commit suicide, but it's a choice.
|
| Everything else (besides addictions) on the mortality chart for
| the US is not a choice... think about that for a moment, we have
| reduced all the other risks of death so much that suicides are a
| meaningful number. In fact, suicides are now above homicides,
| which are also dropping.
| bluntfang wrote:
| I'm not sure if all survivors would identify with suicide being
| a choice. I'm willing to be corrected, but I feel like a lot of
| people who attempt suicide feel like they have expended all of
| their choices. I'm also not sure if addiction is a choice
| either, maybe you could expand on your thoughts?
| vmchale wrote:
| It's kind of like saying "at least people aren't dying in
| childbirth" lol. Still bad!
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| I'm disappointed to see that this website only gives you two
| options, "read the privacy policy" and "agree." It does not list
| out each use of cookies and data collection and allow
| individually opting out of each use case, which is what most
| sites do and what I believe GDPR requires a business to support.
|
| If the only way to make the large banner go away is to click "I
| agree" then you are actively harming your users and at the very
| least should be ashamed of yourself.
| fulafel wrote:
| The focus on suicide methods feels of questionable utility,
| surely the suicide motivations are where it's at.
| simion314 wrote:
| There is the hypotheses that rush suicides can happen when your
| home has a gun or some quick way of ending your life.
|
| There will be hard to study this theories as long as an
| industry is involved and politics.
|
| I have no idea how can you use statistics from other countries
| and get the correct conclusions, we probably need the data from
| people that canceled their suicide and compare the number of
| gun owners and non gun owners.
| DanBC wrote:
| Suicide prevention focuses on a package of measures. These
| include kinder fairer societies as a long term measure. I don't
| know anyone working in suicide prevention in England who isn't
| deeply aware of the wider determinants of mental ill health.
| (And I know a lot of people working in suicide prevention).
|
| But the package of measures also includes "preventing access to
| means and methods". This is because we know it makes a
| difference. We have some natural experiments to show this:
| changing the domestic supply of gas from coal gas to natural
| gas caused a substantial decline in deaths:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/
|
| Changing cars to have catalytic convertors also caused a
| decline in deaths.
|
| People get caught up on this. They say "merely making it harder
| to buy paracetamol isn't addressing the root causes, you need
| to do that". They're right, but they're missing the point that
| this is supposed to be a package of measures that also looks at
| why people attempt suicide.
| watwut wrote:
| For example, men were more likely to shot themselves and women
| were more likely to poison themselves. Also, women were less
| likely to die from suicide, but more likely to attempt it.
|
| The means matter.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Since suicides can often be impulsive and not premeditated, if
| you can reduce the access to the method, you can reduce the
| number suicides.
| dasudasu wrote:
| It has huge policy implications. Some people push gun controls
| because of it, or install fences at bridges and subway stations
| that can cost in the billion dollar range.
| fulafel wrote:
| But isn't this all the more reason to research the causes and
| direct the policy measures there?
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| In all fairness, it's vastly easier to put up a fence over
| a bridge or regulate firearm purchases than fix systemic
| social and economic issues wholesale.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Motivation is harder to categorize and collect. It also assumes
| someone in investigating the root cause and recording it.
| perardi wrote:
| Is it of questionable utility?
|
| I don't think it's a waste to look at the data and see if
| certain methods of suicide really stand out. It doesn't seem
| unreasonable to see if _(this is a gross way to phrase it but
| here we go)_ easy and efficient methods of suicide are
| associated with more suicides. My gut instinct would say that
| having easy access to handguns would be associated with more
| suicides, as it 's (relatively) more reliable than an
| intentional drug overdose.
|
| Does the data here reflect that? I am not a statistician, but
| what's shown actually makes me question my priors. The US has a
| _huge_ difference in suicide by gun rates, but the _overall_
| suicide rate isn 't all that different from European countries.
| And, this actually surprised me, the male-to-female suicide
| ratio in the US isn't much different than other countries,
| which really makes me question my prior that "guys have
| handguns and thus have an easier way to commit suicide".
| losvedir wrote:
| Exactly. It's obvious that suicide by gun is going to be
| correlated to gun ownership, but that's not valuable
| information at all. The much more interesting question of
| whether suicide is correlated to gun ownership was (for me)
| striking in its absence. I guess there's no good data for it.
| James_Henry wrote:
| There's ok data. Take a look at this paper
|
| https://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/BriggsTabarrokFirearmsSuici
| d...
|
| and this page from our world in data
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/suicide#gun-prevalence
|
| Also of interest to me is how regulating alcohol and other
| drug use influences suicide. Because of the failures of the
| war on drugs and prohibition, this doesn't seem to be a
| very popular topic of study, but I reckon that making
| alcohol harder to get would decrease the number of
| suicides.
| vmchale wrote:
| Well the pie chart with possible mental illnesses had some
| stuff in that direction.
| pjc50 wrote:
| In practice, this makes a noticeable difference; it's why you
| can't buy paracetamol in significant quantities in the UK, why
| the suicide rate fell when the UK switched from toxic coal gas
| to natural gas, and so on.
|
| Suicide motivation is usually understood as "depression", but
| antidepressants aren't entirely reliable in this case. It's
| very hard to reach inside someone's head unless they're willing
| to tell you. Neither of the two people I knew who killed
| themselves left notes. Both were on antidepressants.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I've been looking for any updates on covid19 and suicide. This
| lancet article is from April.
|
| Gunnell, D., Appleby, L., Arensman, E., Hawton, K., John, A.,
| Kapur, N., ... & Chan, L. F. (2020). Suicide risk and prevention
| during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet Psychiatry, 7(6),
| 468-471.
| vmchale wrote:
| I saw a recent writeup by journalists on suicide among black
| people in Chicago. So far we're halfway through the year and
| already have matched 2019.
|
| https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/7/25/21336409/sui...
| fdschoeneman wrote:
| I am curious too. These data are critical to policymakers
| today. Without knowing what excess deaths from suicide and
| overdose look like stratified by age, they can't understand the
| risk and reward of covid-19 lockdowns. And even if they suspect
| as I do that the number of life years lost to suicide and
| overdose caused by lockdowns bmay outweigh the number 'saved'
| by lockdowns, it will be difficult to persuade anyone of this
| without data.
|
| Not forcing HHS and CDC to prioritize collection of these
| statistics was a serious mistake.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The thing I take away from comparaison of suicide rates between
| countries is, to put it bluntly, some cultures suck. Or, more
| specifically, some cultures are pretty awful for the people
| actually living in them.
|
| South Korea has a strong economy, is conquering the entertainment
| world, and is a place of technological marvels. They also have 5%
| of deaths by suicide, compared to Greece with 0.5%, whose economy
| collapsed a decade ago. Not to mention SK has the lowest
| birthrates in the world.
|
| I feel strongly we need policy makers to move away from GDP
| growth as the primary marker of national health.
| perardi wrote:
| You're going to need a way less hot take than "some cultures
| suck".
|
| Maybe "religion and family formation is associated with less
| suicide", or "inequality is associated with suicide", or
| "cultural norms play a role in suicide". Not to get too social
| justice warrior, but saying "some cultures suck" is such a
| thought-terminating cliche that it gets you nowhere.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| This can be difficult when there is such massive cultural
| diversity around the world. You can't just explain variance
| of global suicide rates by just one variable like inequality
| or religion. Saying "some cultures suck" is sussinct and
| encapsulates all the variables that go into the issue.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Interesting broad look but what if Greeks die from lack of
| hospital care more ? (non biased question, I have no agenda)
| andrewseanryan wrote:
| When looking at the numbers, you may want to take consideration
| the cultural acceptability of suicide. There are cultures where
| suicide is not viewed the same way, and therefore it may be
| elevated. Certain philosophies view it as an acceptable
| decision if someone has suffered greatly and doesn't wish to
| anymore (off the top of my head, some stoic philosophers have
| spoken about it). I haven't done my research on the topic, but
| isn't it somewhat acceptable to kill yourself in Japan in
| certain circumstances? The taboo factor in other countries
| likely drives the numbers down as many people won't entertain
| the idea because it is "bad".
|
| The point is, I'm not sure "some cultures suck" is the only
| part of the equation. We also need to consider how that culture
| educated their society about suicide.
| beiller wrote:
| To add data to this, Japan was similar to South Korea in 1996
| (both around 2%) but by 2017 South Korea's share of deaths
| from suicide is 5.08% vs. Japan's 2.1% and USA's 1.71%. From
| my understanding, culturally Japan and South Korea are
| similar, please someone correct me if I am wrong.
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| If you live in a society that has stopped you from experiencing
| most things that suck. Think boredom, Hunger, insecurity. Is it
| any surprise that when something that sucks that we can't
| prevent - rejection, death, loss - happens it hits these people
| worse than it would people who haven't had the preventable
| sucks taken away?
| [deleted]
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| I think the key in your comparison is that South Korea is
| famously a very irreligious country (majority of people are
| irreligious) while Greece is a famously homogenously religious
| country (the Greek Orthodox Church dominates).
|
| I don't mean to flame anyone or insinuate anything. But all
| statistics show that religious people are happier and less
| likely to commit suicide than religious people.
| DanBC wrote:
| > comparaison of suicide rates between countries is,
|
| Go careful, a lot of them count deaths in very different ways.
| Some of them even change the way they count death, and so you
| need to be careful if you're comparing rates across time for
| one country.
|
| In the UK:
|
| > The previous National Statistics definition of suicide
| includes deaths from intentional self-harm (where a coroner has
| given a suicide conclusion or made it clear in the narrative
| conclusion that the deceased intended to kill themselves) and
| events of undetermined intent (mainly deaths where a coroner
| has given an open conclusion) in people aged 15 and over.
|
| [...]
|
| > In 2016, the suicide definition was revised to include deaths
| from intentional self-harm in children aged 10 to 14.
| Previously we did not include suicides in young children due to
| the very small numbers involved (see Table 3). However, after
| discussions with Public Health England and the constituent
| countries of the UK, it was decided that it was appropriate to
| include them. Deaths from an event of undetermined intent in
| 10- to- 14-year-olds are not included in these suicide
| statistics, because although for older teenagers and adults we
| assume that in these deaths the harm was self-inflicted, for
| younger children it is not clear whether this assumption is
| appropriate.
|
| So, death after self harm, even if there's no evidence of
| intent to die.
|
| In the US: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/Self-
| Directed-Vio...
|
| > Suicide
|
| > Death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with any
| intent to die as a result of the behavior.
|
| But it's a bit more complicated:
|
| > Despite the large volume of data on certain types of SDV, the
| utility and reproducibility of the resulting information is
| sometimes questionable. Mortality data are problematic for
| several reasons: geographical differences in the definition of
| suicide and how equivocal cases are classified; jurisdictional
| differences in the requirements for the office of coroner or
| medical examiner affecting the standard of proof required to
| classify a death as a suicide; and differences in terms of the
| extent to which potential suicides are investigated to
| accurately determine cause of death.18
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicideTechnicalP...
|
| > Gathering ongoing and systematic data is important for
| prevention efforts. However, it is also important to gather
| data that are uniform and consistent across systems. Consistent
| data allow public health and other entities to better gauge the
| scope of the problem, identify high-risk groups, and monitor
| the effects of prevention programs and policies. Currently, it
| is common for different sectors, agencies, and organizations to
| employ varying definitions of suicidal ideation, behavior, and
| death that can make it difficult to consistently monitor
| specific outcomes across sectors and over time. For example,
| the manner in which deaths are classified can change from one
| jurisdiction to another, and can change based on local medical
| and/or medico-legal standards.4 CDC's uniform definitions and
| recommended data elements for self-directed violence provide a
| useful framework to help ensure that data are collected in a
| consistent manner across surveillance systems.
|
| [...]
| tosh wrote:
| I don't know specifics re South Korea and Greece but I wouldn't
| be surprised if what counts as suicide in one country might
| count as accident or unknown cause of death in another which
| makes comparisons a bit tricky.
| tosh wrote:
| related:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_suicide
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku
| chansiky wrote:
| And that is a big difference - Christianity views suicide
| as disgraceful, punishable, and cowardly. Seppuku on the
| other hand is honorable and courageous. I've also heard of
| older Japanese committing suicide to ease burdens on the
| next generation. I would imagine just this difference in
| perspective would lend itself to very different rates all
| else being equal.
| htrow903290 wrote:
| I can ensure you that Greek culture sucks too, probably way
| more than South Korea.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Yeah, even non Greeks know this is B.S., lol. During the
| crisis, everyone just still did what they always did: smoke
| their cigarettes and have their coffee at the cafenio, and
| say "eh, ti tha kanome?" which is kind of like shrugging your
| shoulders and going "well, not much we can do about it right
| now, might as well enjoy the day"
| Tainnor wrote:
| While this is maybe a bit too bluntly worded and one-sided, I
| still think that the general issue - prioritising GDP growth
| over happiness - is important, so I'm unhappy with the
| downvotes.
| me_me_me wrote:
| But why?
|
| When making bold statement make an effort to give a reasoning
| behind it.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| is there really much reasoning needed to state that life is
| more important than GDP?
|
| Economic activity ought to exist to facilitate human
| flourishing, humans shouldn't be instrumentalized to build
| paperclip factories.
| graposaymaname wrote:
| I can't shout this loud enough! This is important!
|
| More power to ourworldindata.org and everyone working on the
| research.
| automatoney wrote:
| Just wanted to highlight this piece from the article:
|
| "Depression and other mood disorders are widely recognized among
| the most important risk factors for suicide... [Bertolote and
| Fleischmann (2002)] report that 98% of those who died by suicide
| had a diagnosable mental disorder."
|
| You can dispute the number to some extent, but thinking of
| suicide as a choice made in sound mind is a misrepresentation of
| the reality of suicide.
| guerrilla wrote:
| This misses the possibbility of common cause in some or many
| cases. Also, mental illness can cause immense suffering and
| choosing to escape that can be entirely rational depending on
| the circumstances especially considering acccess to health
| care. The reaction to mental illness socially and economically
| should also be considered because it can make life even worse
| for sufferers. If escaping a life of gauranteed pain is
| irrational then we're going to have to disagree on our
| conception of rationality here.
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| Suicide data for the US is incredibly depressing. Suicide among
| kids aged 12-14 has doubled in the 20 years to 2018 and now
| outranks any kind of disease as the 2nd leading cause of death
| (after accidental injury). You probably don't think there are
| lots of 10-year-old schoolgirls hanging themselves, and that used
| to be incredibly rare, but now there are several of those every
| year. It's a dark time.
| lilboiluvr69 wrote:
| This issue is somewhat close to my heart.
|
| My grandmother committed suicide. My mother has tried to commit
| suicide on several occasions, and I have suffered from depression
| for most of my life.
|
| I'm happy to say that ketamine infusion therapy was a
| breakthrough for me, after decades of making no progress with
| anti-depressants, I am now virtually depression-free and have
| been so for years. I highly recommend it to anyone who suffers
| from treatment-resistant depression. That said...
|
| > Every suicide is a tragedy.
|
| Statements like that on suicide prevention websites have always
| bothered me because I find them disingenuous, and for me
| personally have always been counter-productive. I think it's
| obvious that not all suicides are tragedies. I think that as
| uncomfortable as it makes us, for many people suicide is the most
| responsible decision a person can make.
|
| Not everybody has loved ones, and not everybody is a great
| person. My best friend's father was incredibly abusive and
| incredibly miserable, despite spending his whole life in various
| forms of treatment. His death marked a significant improvement in
| my friend's wellness. I suppose this man could have just left his
| family but...I wouldn't say his suicide is a tragedy. He's no
| longer suffering.
|
| A lot of the arguments I see against suicide is that it hurts the
| people around you. Which is true, and this effect is difficult to
| understate. I'm still affected by the suicide of my grandmother,
| whom I never even met.
|
| But that's not a reason to live, that's just a reason not to die.
|
| I'm guessing that access to quality healthcare is one of the best
| ways to prevent suicide. (Luckily I could afford my ketamine
| injections and subsequent prescriptions.) I think that's obvious
| to everyone though. Strange in my country how access is still
| such an issue...
| automatoney wrote:
| Maybe the argument that suicide hurts the people around the
| person who killed themself can be helpful by reminding people
| that there's others who care about them who would want to help
| if they could. Either way, it seems to be enough for some
| people, and I think if it helps people through a crisis then
| it's an argument worth repeating.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Wanting to help and being able to are very different things
| though.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Is there any chance you're in the Bay Area and would be willing
| to share which org you got ketamine therapy through? I have a
| friend in SF who's antidepressants have stopped working over
| the years - she's hoping to do ketamine therapy but can't find
| a legit organization to go through.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I would start by contacting a psychiatric organization like
| MAPS, or personally reaching to it's board members or
| practices that are listed there. I don't know of any legal
| organization that will put you on ketamine therapy without
| having you as a patient from beforehand or having your
| psychiatrists recommend you to them for treatment.
|
| Is she seeing a psychiatrist? Antidepressants stop working
| all the time, she should be having this conversations with
| her psych or telling her psych that she's stopping treatment
| and finding someone else because it's not working. If she's
| on any other basic meds like sleeping pills or anxiety meds
| she should be able to get a prescription for them from a GP
| or any cheap synch in-network only by saying she's already
| taking them.
| badrabbit wrote:
| You're wrong, at what point would you be responsible to take
| your own life? By what authority? Did you bring yourself into
| the world? It's one thing to say you have a right to take your
| life, but a responsibility? To who whom is the responsibility
| owed? If you have no one to care for you then you owe no
| responsibility to anyone, it you do, all the same you owe the
| people that care about you a chance to share a life with them,
| to share tomorrow with you. Now a right, that's a different
| subject, I don't condone euthnasia but I can't personally
| criticize a person wanting to leave the world because they
| can't endure today's pain.
|
| One thing I will say about this subject I have thought about a
| lot. No one wants to die,absolutley no one. We may want the
| pain to be over, the boredom to end,the despair to dissipate or
| some other end we think is achieved by suicide but no one wants
| to say goodbye to their own self. If all things are possible to
| everyone, no one would choose death over life.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > at what point would you be responsible to take your own
| life?
|
| Not the OP but there may be circumstances where someone is
| justified believing their continued suffering is a burden to
| themselves and others.
|
| > By what authority?
|
| What authority do you believe is violated by someone making
| the choice when and how they die?
|
| > Did you bring yourself into the world?
|
| No, exactly. So if adults of sound mind have a right over
| their own person (despite an involuntary birth) then
| certainly they have a right over how and if their existence
| continues.
|
| > If all things are possible to everyone, no one would choose
| death over life.
|
| This isn't saying much. Not everything is possible to
| everyone. Rational people are making difficult decisions all
| the time for this very reason.
|
| I don't advocate suicide. Plenty of survivors can speak to
| the value of life better than me.
| steego wrote:
| You are _absolutely_ wrong about nobody wanting to die and it
| has nothing to do with the pain to be over, the boredom to
| end, or the despair to dissipate.
|
| You sound young or too invested in your own life to actually
| understand the real circumstances for why people would not
| want to live.
|
| You do realize that not everyone sees life as a gift, right?
| Some people imagine never being alive in the first place a
| greater gift.
|
| You mention that if all things are possible to everyone, no
| one would choose death over life.
|
| Again, you're wrong. You can't fathom why someone would opt
| to no longer exist if all things were possible, but I know
| people who would opt to chase everything from existence if
| they had the power.
|
| You just don't understand it.
|
| I'm really amazed that you honestly think you can speak for
| everyone when it's clear you've never given other peoples'
| outlook anything more than a fleeting thought.
|
| Personally speaking, I'm happy with my life. If I reached my
| old age and someone gave me the option to live indefinitely
| or to stop, at some point I'm just going to want to stop.
|
| At some point, I'm going to want to cease to being.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I can confidently say you are wrong. Whatever your reasons
| are to escape this existense, if you can change existense
| itself you would rather do that instead of death. See, you
| yourself said it was escaping this existense or something
| else, you are escaping life not embracing death. It is
| hatred for life not love of death!
|
| I don't know if I would be consideree young but I am no
| stranger to the subject.
|
| > You do realize that not everyone sees life as a gift,
| right? Some people imagine never being alive in the first
| place a greater gift.
|
| Yes, I do. That's because of the life they know. Not
| existing to begin with sounds great because of your
| relative knowledge of what existing means.
| Natsu wrote:
| You're right that ketamine seems like a magic switch for at
| least some people, but please be careful if you have any
| history of psychosis.
|
| I almost ended up as the murdered half of a murder-suicide due
| to that. Which is damnable because I've never seen any other
| treatment have the same effect as esketamine.
|
| I really hope they find some way to solve that, maybe they also
| need to administer anti-psychotics in that case, I truly don't
| know. Because the treatment itself is just about as close to
| turning off depression as anything I've ever seen. Though I
| understand it may not be that way for everyone, for some, it
| _really_ helps.
|
| See also: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/11/ketamine-now-
| by-prescr...
| [deleted]
| vmchale wrote:
| Interesting to see the distribution of psychiatric diagnoses;
| people don't often think of mental illness aside depression in
| this context.
|
| Schizophrenia is less common than depression so less absolute
| burden, but it's deadlier.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-08-06 23:00 UTC)