[HN Gopher] Suicide trends in the early months of the Covid-19 p... ___________________________________________________________________ Suicide trends in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic Author : DanBC Score : 38 points Date : 2021-04-13 20:44 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.thelancet.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.thelancet.com) | kulix425 wrote: | doubt | argvargc wrote: | In "The Lancet"? | | You mean the same Lancet that published an anti-HCQ study, pushed | all over mainstream media, that it was later forced to | (comparatively quietly) retract, after the papers authors refused | to provide would-be peer-review any access to the data? | | _next_ | dj_mc_merlin wrote: | I apologize if this is dark. Could it be that the change-up in | our routines and the world in general has made some suicidal | people reconsider? We live in very interesting times.. I have | never been close to considering suicide, but I imagine I would at | least have wanted to find out what happens next now that there's | a global pandemic. | bellyfullofbac wrote: | My guess is, it's because in the beginning of the pandemic many | people started reconnecting with people they hadn't talked to | in a long time, and some suicidal people found sympathetic | ears. | | Fascinatingly, social media and messenger apps probably have | data to back my guess, "Of people that interacted with each | other, give me the time interval since their last interaction", | and my guess is, the average of that interval would've | increased in March/April 2020. | standardUser wrote: | That take isn't unintuitive, but I think it discounts the | degree to which suicidal thoughts are the product of mental | illness. It's not that a suicidal person needs a reason to | live, or a logical argument to change their mind. In most cases | (some estimates say 90%) the individual needs treatment for a | specific mental illness. | LatteLazy wrote: | Seems like a good study. Interesting result, I wonder if it will | hold true for later periods, once the novelty has worn off... | ketanmaheshwari wrote: | Should HN automatically post the suicide prevention lines on | posts that mention suicide and have a certain number of votes? I | feel like it should. | OldManAndTheCpp wrote: | Does that have any effect on reducing suicide rates? | ketamine__ wrote: | In this climate if it saves just one life it's worth it. | Kinrany wrote: | In what climate wouldn't it be? | | But we don't know if it does. It sounds like a kind of | thing that does almost nothing on its own and becomes | irrelevant the moment a halfway decent solution is found. | vmception wrote: | Why do you feel that way? I don't have any context on your | worldview and don't really understand that meme. What does | suicide prevention copypasta actually do, what does it hope to | accomplish, is there any quantitative study on the efficacy, | and do people even want data as opposed to a feeling? | ketanmaheshwari wrote: | It was a spontaneous thought that came to mind when I saw | this post. I am not aware of any such research but know that | search engines do it automatically and people do on Reddit | posts that are related to this topic. | carabiner wrote: | Please don't. Posting the suicide hotlines does not make you a | hero. | pizza wrote: | imo no, it's a trite gesture that I can't help but feel is | robotic and lacking in human warmth.. | RileyJames wrote: | I'm surprised the numbers between NSW & QLD are similar to | Victoria. As Victoria (Melbourne specifically, but that | represents the majority of the population) had a long, harsh | lockdown, where as QLD & NSW did not. | | Maybe looking at suicides within specific populations would be | more telling. I imagine for many, working from home was an | opportunity. For others, it meant unemployment. | rossdavidh wrote: | Well, it all depends on the exact mechanisms for how "I'm | depressed" gets all the way to suicide. No question that the | lockdown was depressing for a lot of people, but there's all | kinds of reasons it might not (in the early months) have led to | an increase in suicides, including: | | - a feeling that it wasn't just you, lots of people felt this | way | | - a feeling that an end was in sight, unlike if you think | you've just screwed up your life somehow | | - an understanding that the way you were feeling was not your | fault, and had an external cause, rather than being about your | worth or etc. | | Not saying any of these theories (guesses) are right, just | suggesting there are lots of possibilities which would need to | be examined to really understand what went on (and didn't) | during a lockdown. | rossdavidh wrote: | While it's kind of a non-event, and given that it's only the | early months of the pandemic maybe not even a particularly | surprising non-event, I think it is important that even studies | which don't find anything noteworthy get published. So, while I | still have serious concerns about the long-term mental health | impacts of the pandemic (for several reasons), I do think it's | good that this got published. | jonas21 wrote: | Why do you say that this is not noteworthy? | | They found there was no significant increase in suicide in any | of the 35 regions they studied, and in fact found a | statistically significant decrease in suicide in 12 of them. | Given that many people were concerned there might be an | increase in suicides due to pandemic lockdowns, particularly in | the early months when restrictions were most severe, this seems | like a very noteworthy result. | idownvoted wrote: | People who rejoice about this study because they want to use | it to defend policies that are criticized for potential | negative mental health impacts willingly neglect the nature | of suicide: Of course sucide numbers go down because many | suicidal people want their death to be noticed. | | Say the policies are lifted and suicides go up again, will | the rejoicing ones account for that as well? Of course not, | they will rather gaslight the argument by blaming the | increase on the lifting | [deleted] | redis_mlc wrote: | A whole class of business people was wiped out financially in | the US. When the commercial real estate lawsuits start, we'll | see what happens. | UncleOxidant wrote: | Yeah, I don't know how many times on HN I've seen comments | like "we need to open things up because suicides are up due | to shutdowns!" without any supporting data. And now we see | suicides were actually down in some places and mostly | unchanged everywhere else. | chrisco255 wrote: | The data doesn't show that lockdowns didn't cause suicide, | either though. For example, Norway is in the dataset, and | Norway didn't lock down, or only locked down for a couple | weeks. It might also be interesting to see what the results | were in urban areas with tight restrictions, maybe even in | countries with already high suicide rates, like South Korea | and Japan, to see the results. But either way, you cannot | isolate the "lockdown" variable because there was a full | spectrum of policy responses from different countries, | cities, and subregions. So, let's just say the jury is | still out. | | We know that social isolation causes depression. We know | that economic hardship causes depression. When people argue | against lockdowns, this is why. | hobs wrote: | We had more lockdowns, we didnt have more suicides, how | is that not showing the claim doesnt hold? | bellyfullofbac wrote: | But this was just for the first three months, and for those | regions... I'm not for hasty reopenings, rather for more | money for mental health, and intuition says the loss of | jobs and financial security must have an effect on mental | health, and unfortunately along with that, suicides. | | E.g. in India: https://www.latimes.com/world- | nation/story/2020-10-06/suicid... | WillPostForFood wrote: | There are hundreds of stories like this one by NPR, which | not an expected source for anti-lockdown fake news: | | https://www.npr.org/sections/health- | shots/2021/02/02/9620601... | | So people read it and think the suicide rate is going up. | It may actually be going up for some groups in some places, | but the bigger message here is that the media loves a good | horror story, and is willing to report anything based on | anecdotes. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-13 23:00 UTC)