U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High
April 22, 2016 8:48 AM   Subscribe

"Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s." (slNYT)

"The federal health agency’s last major report on suicide, released in 2013, noted a sharp increase in suicide among 35- to 64-year-olds. But the rates have risen even more since then — up by 7 percent for the entire population since 2010, the end of the last study period — and federal researchers said they issued the new report to draw attention to the issue."
posted by crazy with stars (58 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Always worth sharing whenever subjects like this hit the blue: ThereIsHelp MeFi Wiki
posted by Fizz at 8:57 AM on April 22, 2016 [22 favorites]


I despair at statistics like these. Clearly, there are several things going on in this country where people no longer feel they can be resilient against all of the slings and arrows life throws at them. How can we be doing so many things wrong as a country, and as a community of millions, that so many people feel so bereft and alone, that it feels as if death is the best choice on their plate? If suicide is the outcome, I hope this reports encourages us to turn the spotlight on the pressures and causes that left so many people without hope.
posted by anitanita at 8:57 AM on April 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


But other experts pointed out that the unemployment rate had been declining in the latter period of the study, and questioned how important the economy was to suicide.

"Yeah, there's lots more jobs now - I've got three of them!" as my dad used to say.

But seriously, it really almost offends me that the emphasis is on "let's increase 'suicide prevention' medical interventions" and not on "let's work on the social issues that create hopelessness". Not that I don't want interventions in the moment, but it seems really cruel and stupid and very 21st century American to say "we will put all this effort into ER-level ways of saving you, so that we can turn you loose back into a life of precarity and misery, because CHOOSE LIFE!!!!"
posted by Frowner at 8:57 AM on April 22, 2016 [161 favorites]


This post being so close to the one about soaring rents is no accident.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:58 AM on April 22, 2016 [44 favorites]


It's just like how you can always find a "social worker" to go over your "options" for low cost medical care...lots of social workers, but the "options" are pretty much "there's nothing unless it's ER-worthy, so if it's chronic or slowly terminal you're SOL".
posted by Frowner at 8:59 AM on April 22, 2016 [19 favorites]


Although any rise in suicide rates is lamentable, it is helpful - especially when investigating causal factors - to look at the larger context, as in this CDC chart showing US suicide rates since 1981.
posted by twsf at 9:10 AM on April 22, 2016 [14 favorites]


I never know what to make of reports like these. In the 80s, we were told OMG, suicide rates have tripled! Drug deaths have tripled! And here I am reading the same headlines again. What does it mean? That we'll all be dead soon?
posted by Melismata at 9:16 AM on April 22, 2016


On suicide among girls from this PBS article:
While the numbers remain small, the suicide rate among girls age 10-14 tripled from 1999 to 2014 and experienced the largest percent increase. That finding surprised Curtin, who explained that deaths are just one element to consider when studying suicide.

“For that group, the deaths are just the tip of the iceberg,” Curtin said. “There are so many more attempts and hospitalizations.”

According to CDC’s data, suicide attempts among 10- to 14-year-olds rose 135 percent between 2001 and 2014, said Deb Stone, a behavioral scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:17 AM on April 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


This post being so close to the one about soaring rents is no accident.
Yeah, that occurred to me too. I couldn't find good historical data on rents and suicide rates in forms that were comparable, but did find this study: Economic Conditions and Suicide Rates in New York City
The rate of suicide declined linearly from 8.1 per 100,000 people in 1990 to 4.8 per 100,000 people in 1999 and then remained stable from 1999 to 2006. In a generalized additive model in which the authors accounted for long-term and seasonal time trends, there was a negative association between monthly levels of economic activity and rates of suicide; the predicted rate of suicide was 0.12 per 100,000 persons lower when economic activity was at its peak compared with when it was at its nadir. The relation between economic activity and suicide differed by race/ethnicity and sex. Stock market volatility was not associated with suicide rates.
posted by Rangi at 9:17 AM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wasn't this a central plot point in Das Leben Der Anderen?

For East Germany, that is.
posted by Slackermagee at 9:21 AM on April 22, 2016


After North Carolina’s Law, Trans Suicide Hotline Calls Double: Trans Lifeline data shared with The Daily Beast shows that before Gov. Pat McCrory signed HB 2 on March 23, the hotline’s daily volume peaked at around 200 incoming calls. After the law, the peaks started getting higher.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:22 AM on April 22, 2016 [18 favorites]


But other experts pointed out that the unemployment rate had been declining in the latter period of the study, and questioned how important the economy was to suicide.

Yes. Unemployment is at 5%. It helps when labor force participation went from 67% to 63% since Bush Jr. came into the White House. Like 12 million people vanished from the labor force numbers of course you're going to see a huge reduction in unemployment. The employment to population ratio looks like something out of Reagan's recession not Clinton's boom times.

More money than ever is going to the top. The middle class is tapped out on debt and borrowing. The working class isn't a huge economic driver. It's the end game of half a century of systemic looting of the country starting to take its toll. We couldn't even inflate our way into fucking economic activity because 90 cents of every dollar the fed printed during QE and QE2 just went to some rich asshole's bank account.

You want economic growth? Full employment? Tax the fuck out of extreme wealth and get the government building shit and you'll have full employment. You'll have rising wages as unskilled labor gets drawn into the construction workforce instead of flipping burgers. The working class WILL HAVE MONEY TO SPEND! And they won't fucking kill themselves because they see no way out.
posted by Talez at 9:28 AM on April 22, 2016 [86 favorites]


You want economic growth? Full employment? Tax the fuck out of extreme wealth and get the government building shit and you'll have full employment. You'll have rising wages as unskilled labor gets drawn into the construction workforce instead of flipping burgers. The working class WILL HAVE MONEY TO SPEND! And they won't fucking kill themselves because they see no way out.
Don't need to wait for the tax receipts to come in. Just employ people directly right now.
posted by wuwei at 9:35 AM on April 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


The rise was particularly steep for women
I guess it depends how you measure it? Purely from eyeballing the graph at the top of the article, for all of the age groups they present the gradient for men looks at least as steep as for women. The exception that leaps out is men over 75, who had a much bigger decrease than women at the same age, although still ending about eight-fold higher.

I guess in terms of relative increase it's correct, but in terms of the actual number of additional deaths each year the genders look about the same.

(This is similar to the "Relative Risk Ratio" vs "Number needed to harm" thing -- two ways of discussing epidemiological or medical stats that present the same information in ways that most people instinctively understand in very different ways. This is a good write-up of why NNT -- and by extension NNH -- is generally a more useful presentation.)
posted by metaBugs at 9:43 AM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you were playing a nation-management sim game and set things up so that two incomes were required for families to be financially secure, good jobs were scarce, upward mobility was nonexistent, wages were frozen for 35 years, and college costs were so high that your only hope for a high salary came with 25 years of loan payments, you would expect to lose the game as your citizens sunk into frustration and despair. The only reason to play that way is if you were either too stupid to manage things better or enjoyed causing misery.

That we are seeing the same thing in real life should surprise no one. The question is will the nation take steps to change things?
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:05 AM on April 22, 2016 [47 favorites]


The Rise of the Robots
posted by caddis at 10:13 AM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


The question is will the nation take steps to change things?

Maybe it's just election-year cynicism, but ... no? Instead, it will at best become a political bludgeon to be deployed when necessary.
posted by aramaic at 10:15 AM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


My only thought on the subject is, after dealing with both my mother and father-in-law over the past couple of years, I increasingly view suicide (assisted or not) to be a legitimate choice, at least for elders.

As horrific as the US healthcare system is, it's doubly-so for any elder who doesn't have a shipping container full of hundreds stashed somewhere. And, even if you do have the financial wherewithal, late-life healthcare can be simply and profoundly demoralizing.

Sadly, I can't see any deep, systemic changes being made to create a more human-friendly world...a world people don't feel a real desire to leave. There's too much profit in putting bandaids on the effects.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:32 AM on April 22, 2016 [20 favorites]


Don't need to wait for the tax receipts to come in. Just employ people directly right now.

Yep. It's so utterly frustrating watching the US being able to borrow at 2.6% for 30 years and DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH IT. We literally borrow money so rich people don't have to pay it.
posted by Talez at 10:41 AM on April 22, 2016 [23 favorites]


The question is will the nation take steps to change things?

No. Because "the nation" is run by the people that have benefited from the last 35 years. The 90% at the bottom have no voice, and when they do try to speak, they're co-opted by professional agents or corporate plant candidates steering the conversation back to the same "solutions" that caused the problems in the first place.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:43 AM on April 22, 2016 [16 favorites]


Not that I don't want interventions in the moment, but it seems really cruel and stupid and very 21st century American to say "we will put all this effort into ER-level ways of saving you, so that we can turn you loose back into a life of precarity and misery, because CHOOSE LIFE!!!!"

This. 100%.

It's like how, in my last job, when I started getting pressure because my schedule became less predictable as my wife and I were separating and our child care got to be less predictable because she started working full-time again, I discussed the issues with my manager and his suggestion was to use EAP benefits to get counseling. I asked, "Okay, so you can't give me extra scheduling flexibility I need to deal with unpredictable events, but you'll give me more flexibility to seek counseling?" Well, no. The problem was there were more demands on my time and less structure in my life, not that I needed to add even more work to my plate by going into counseling. My kids needing me to supervise them wasn't a psychological or emotional condition, FFS.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:44 AM on April 22, 2016 [28 favorites]


No. Because "the nation" is run by the people that have benefited from the last 35 years.

Yup. And those who have benefitted the most, at the upper echelons, have a tremendous cumulative advantage, that keeps building and building and building.
posted by cell divide at 10:53 AM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sadly, I can't see any deep, systemic changes being made to create a more human-friendly world...a world people don't feel a real desire to leave.

Yeah, I'm getting a little demoralized by the focus on job training/teaching kids programming, not because it's not awesome (it's awesome), but _nobody_ seems to be focusing on replacing the social bonds that we're not forming.

People are working all the time, even when they're young and in school; they're having to rent instead of owning homes, so they're not investing in the _places_ they live and the _people_ they live near.

I'm talking about small investments: go meet your neighbors, have them over for dinner, don't treat them as a collection of potential problems to be avoided but as potential sources of warmth and fun and help. Doing so is, of course, very complicated -- but these are real problems and opportunities to make life 1000% better for everybody.

Just exhorting people to "go out and meet your neighbors" isn't enough, either. Nobody knows how to make it happen. Somebody has to figure out _how_ to make these things possible, and how to help assure that they go well when they do happen.
posted by amtho at 11:10 AM on April 22, 2016 [9 favorites]


We've been divided and conquered. Corporate media, corporate TV shows, corporate news, corporate advertising and marketing, corporate politics. Our lives have been designed by for us by the very people who want to stay in power; if people aren't willing to stand up to the status quo and shake their own lives up a little, we're not going to get those warmer, closer relationships or community bonds.

So things aren't going to improve unless people are willing to get uncomfortable. And I don't blame 'em, I fought the utterly godawful and illegal status quo at my job, and now I'm teetering on homelessness while I rush to find a new one. Due to our social safety net being gutted, and American citizens being convinced that life has to be lived by law of the jungle/weird mystical notions of the Holy Individual.

We've been royally fucked in this country, intentionally. How do we counter corporate public relations that have reshaped our belief systems that are reinforced by our harsh economic and social conditions and entrenched by monopolized corporate media and deeply corrupt politics? Changing things for the better, for us, doesn't look like an easy road at all.
posted by gehenna_lion at 11:18 AM on April 22, 2016 [16 favorites]


I blame the internet
posted by Flashman at 11:25 AM on April 22, 2016


You guys -- you're cheering me up.
posted by newdaddy at 11:32 AM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


> Although any rise in suicide rates is lamentable, it is helpful - especially when investigating causal factors - to look at the larger context, as in this CDC chart showing US suicide rates since 1981.

Here's the new data overlaid on that chart.
posted by lucidium at 11:38 AM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Here's the new data overlaid on that chart.

So the last peak was late in the Reagan recession? Almost suggests something, doesn't it?
posted by Frowner at 11:48 AM on April 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


living wages, indeed. living wages, and full fucking employment or bust.
posted by eustatic at 12:00 PM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


I wonder if there's a difference in rates between those who have children and those who don't. Economic factors would influence the decision to have children, and I can imagine that having them would be a major factor in how meaningful life might be as you get older.
posted by amtho at 12:03 PM on April 22, 2016


I wonder how much concerns about the habitability of the planet factor in. It casts a pall on considerations of "the future." I know it's a pretty heavy component of my own despair.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 12:07 PM on April 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


My Bipolar is pretty well controlled, but I needed a new psychiatrist lately and the process of finding one fills me will dread and dispair. I have spent hours on the phone and online trying to find someone who takes my insurance, takes new patients, isn't a child psychiatrist mislabeled on the Aetna website etc. etc. Yesterday I found out that our insurance is changing in June so I have to start searching again. For me, in a pretty good place, this is a pain in the ass. For someone who is suicidal it's insurmountable.
posted by Biblio at 12:21 PM on April 22, 2016 [15 favorites]


I blame Facebook. When shit's gone really bad in your life, there's nothing worse than seeing how *great* everybody else's life is. Of course, their lives aren't really that great; that's only what they post to Facebook, because we live in a culture where it's never okay to admit you're having a bad day or god forbid you admit that you're having trouble in your life.

I went through some shitty times over the winter, worst of my life actually. I thought about starting some kind of inverse Facebook, for people who are suffering or having a hard time of it. Bragging of any sort would forbidden or at least strongly discouraged. It's an idea I still revisit from time to time.
posted by panama joe at 1:10 PM on April 22, 2016 [9 favorites]


panama joe, I would be interested in this SpleenBook :)
posted by amtho at 1:19 PM on April 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


panama joe I thought about starting some kind of inverse Facebook, for people who are suffering or having a hard time of it.

Nobody seems to be doing anything with gripesession.com
posted by yeolcoatl at 1:34 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Neither is my own choice of domains, miseryloves.com, although the .co is being used "to send out to the world the work of some of Montreal’s most interesting and unique bands" But I support any seriously "Anti-Facebook" enterprise. [end derail to very serious topic]
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:44 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


The US has very little in the way of a social safety net. We don't live in a collectivist society where peoples' lives are super family oriented, and the government hasn't stepped in to make up the gap. So it's quite possible that you can just get left out in the cold as a human being; broke, homeless, bankrupt from medical bills, avoided by people. We all have this fear gnawing away at us, because we know, at least remotely, the abyss that awaits us below if we Fail. And as a result, we're obsessed with work and Success. Which is why it's never okay to admit that you're having a hard time. People smell that you're having trouble. It wafts off you. They're afraid it's contagious. People want to associate themselves with Busy, Successful People. So we're all obsessed with projecting this image of being Busy, Successful People. People see you not doing that, it's like they just smelled shit. They screw up their faces. What is this guy doing? How come he's not pretending to be Busy, Successful People like the rest of us? After all, what's the #1 piece of advice everybody gives you? Okay everybody, say it along with me : "Fake it till you make it!" This is why we can't rest or take a vacation. We must propel ourselves away from the abyss of Failure. We're like rats, clawing for survival, always in constant rat mode.

But what's the alternative? As Frowner put it, 1,000 social workers are available 24/7 to go over you "options" with you. Basically what happens if you're having trouble is people want to medicalize you. This person Needs Help. They need to See A Professional. They need to be Diagnosed. They need to be on Medication. But what if those things don't work for you? What if medicalization doesn't help you? What if all those things fail you? What if the therapists and doctors can't help you? What then? What then? Ummmmm.....

When I was going through the shit over the winter, the one thing that helped me the most was my friends being willing to just come over and hang out and watch a movie with me. That's all I asked of them. I didn't need to borrow money, didn't need them to do me any favors. I just needed people to be around me and spend time with me and not medicalize me or feel sorry for me or anything. Just be with me. Even if I stink of Sickness and Failure. Even if I am not in any way capable of Faking It Until I Make It.
posted by panama joe at 2:04 PM on April 22, 2016 [40 favorites]


Medicalization actually saved my life. A double diagnosis of Heart Failure and Depression when I my general functionality dropped about 90% earned me Permanent Social Security Disability (and faster than most applicants: I credit two good doctors, support from my last employer... and, oh yeah, being a white male) and a getting a monthly stipend slightly larger than my retired father (enough to live in a not-cheap-but-not-SF part of California and only pay 41% of my income in rent). I know I'm insanely lucky - that's why I am so fervently insistent that millions more should get treated like me.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:23 PM on April 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


The US has very little in the way of a social safety net. We don't live in a collectivist society where peoples' lives are super family oriented, and the government hasn't stepped in to make up the gap. So it's quite possible that you can just get left out in the cold as a human being; broke, homeless, bankrupt from medical bills, avoided by people.

It's not that we don't live in a "collectivist society", it's that we currently have a socially manufactured hyper-individualist culture going on. It's been constructed for us over the past few decades. If we truly didn't have a collectivist society, we wouldn't have weekends right now. People got together and died for whatever employment rights we have left.

To say we're not a "collectivist society" completely ignores facts and history. That's how deep we are in with all of this propaganda crap that we're an "individualist" society with a "frontier spirit". People pulled that out of their butts a few decades ago. There's no inherent truth to any of it. They're beliefs without substance.

We can break out of those beliefs and create new ones if we want to.
posted by gehenna_lion at 2:35 PM on April 22, 2016 [14 favorites]


No. Because "the nation" is run by the people that have benefited from the last 35 years. The 90% at the bottom have no voice, and when they do try to speak, they're co-opted by professional agents or corporate plant candidates steering the conversation back to the same "solutions" that caused the problems in the first place.

Example, the canned response to Black Lives Matter is All Lives Matter. Muddling the issue is a very effective way to maintain the status quo.

And why do we still need States anyway? It just makes it a zillion times more difficult to formulate any meaningful solutions when policies get mangled into unrecognizable and ineffective laws and programs through the state's rights filter.
posted by Beholder at 2:55 PM on April 22, 2016


I blame Facebook. When shit's gone really bad in your life, there's nothing worse than seeing how *great* everybody else's life is.

Well then my Facebook is providing a public service because my life is one disaster after another and I try to document it accurately because if you can't be a good example, at least you can be a cautionary tale.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:50 PM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


On the wikipedia list of countries by suicide rate there are 49 countries ahead of the United States. There is no good news, but the bad news is there is lots of room on the upside.

I saw Kay Redfield Jamison give a lecture on suicide shortly after her book came out. She had two points she wanted to emphasize strongly (she was almost yelling here). It is a disgrace that we have all these people killing themselves when almost all of them can be helped; and the cultural convention of avoiding talking about suicide and how much of it we have got hurts us all.
posted by bukvich at 4:49 PM on April 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


I blame Facebook. When shit's gone really bad in your life, there's nothing worse than seeing how *great* everybody else's life is.

Imagine getting the news your wife's leaving you that way. When she's the love of your life. I'm not too fond of Facebook myself these days, but I'll be damned if I'll let it get to me that much. Suicide still requires the hope there's a way out. There's usually not. The best way to deal with most problems is to live through them and do the work. I'd still never consider suicide on an intellectual level until my life reached a point where it finally made enough sense and was beautiful enough to want to live through again because I still think Nietzsche was probably right about eternal return. The best way out is through, no matter how bad things get.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:03 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I can imagine that having them would be a major factor in how meaningful life might be as you get older.

or being surrounded by unpleasant people who tell you that a life without children is not meaningful might be a factor...
posted by frumiousb at 5:11 PM on April 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


Sorry, amtho, that was a snarky remark but I really *hate* the throwaway association of children with personal meaning. And I also seriously believe that one of the challenges we have is that we have these images of a "right" way to live against which we are constantly measuring ourselves.
posted by frumiousb at 5:16 PM on April 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


life without children is not meaningful might be a factor...

Who ever says that? What makes life meaningful is so personal and depends so much on individual experience and personal development, anybody who claims there's only one way to do it meaningfully is full of it. Speaking for myself, it means a lot in part because both my parents effectively abandoned me. Having kids (and a secure family life, once upon a time...) means a lot to me personally because of who I am, not because it's The One True Way, like everything else seems to be these days.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:40 PM on April 22, 2016


Ah, missed your clarification, frumiousb. Carry on, then.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:42 PM on April 22, 2016


NPR blames prescription painkillers. So they cracked down on it, scared the shit out of doctors, and people jumped to heroin. Yes, doctors with lines out the door charging $100 per rx need to be sanctioned, but let the doctors who actually doctor manage it. Now every pharmacy looks at pain patients like they're lepers. Is unlimited and unchecked alcohol abuse (and now heroin) the better option? Fuck no.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:11 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Whenever suicide awareness pops up again in the media - when a celebrity like Robin Williams dies, when something like #belletstalk happens - I'm filled with such deep exhaustion at the endless ads for the National Suicide Hotline, the admonishments to just "ask for help" or "JUST GO TO THERAPY" (see: AskMe), as if such things are easy for people who are in acute crisis, or any people. As if they haven't already thought of this, or you just need to reach out and help is accessible, and if you are unsuccessful it's a matter of personal might as opposed to a system that is rotting from the inside out.

We're facing a shortage of mental healthcare workers, and more than that we're facing a shortage of GOOD, competent, non-abusive mental healthcare workers. There are waiting lists and insurance fuckery and endless hoops that people are asked to jump through who are experiencing some of the most serious health crises a human being can have. God help you if you're marginalized in any additional way. God help you if you don't have insurance, or good insurance, or a "bad" diagnosis, or you're struggling with addiction.

We tell people to call 911, or go to the ER, where they are abused, corralled, shot at. And on top of that, we expect them to navigate a world in which even the most progressive people may think of them as lesser and broken and toxic. There is, as said above, no consideration of the nuances of individual situations or of looking at anyone as a full human being effected by their environment. It's sickening.
posted by colorblock sock at 7:25 PM on April 22, 2016 [21 favorites]


frumiousb, I simply meant that for some people, who might have found meaning in having families, economic disincentives could prevent that. Especially if being a "good" parent, for you, means a providing good education, a safe community, and the assurance of medical care, and you don't think you can provide those things, and you don't think you could stay sane and love a child without those things.

Lots of people are fine not having children, and that's really important. However, lots of people get a lot of meaning from having loving families, and surely not all of them feel confident of their ability to do so. (It's not just economic means I'm talking about either - lots of people do fine raising kids with limited incomes).
posted by amtho at 7:33 PM on April 22, 2016


Mod note: A few comments deleted. It's totally fair that people want to underscore the seriousness of social/economic problems and the urgency of fixing them. But if we're going to have threads on this topic, make your points without anything in the neighborhood of justifying or normalizing or rationalizing suicide. Please consider the effect of your comments on others. If you need to talk to someone, you can come to the contact form, or to one of the hotlines and online chats listed in There Is Help.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:45 PM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Suicides in Greenland.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:23 PM on April 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think any discussion of suicide benefits from a reading of this article. How not to commit suicide - Art Kleiner
posted by theora55 at 5:57 AM on April 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


Not trying to normalize/justify/rationalize here, and I know this is a hard topic for a lot of people (my own life has certainly been rocky in this regard), but I hope it isn't triggering to look at a lack of hospice and other palliative care, along with the US's (IMO) regressive social policies regarding assisted death.

I mean, even in Soylent Green the state tried to at least make your death pleasant.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:17 AM on April 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women."

I wonder how it correlates with gun ownership.
posted by sour cream at 2:38 PM on April 23, 2016


Not particularly well, I think. The fraction of households with at least one gun has fallen by roughly 40% in the last 30-40 years.
posted by Justinian at 10:43 PM on April 23, 2016




Is that CDC chart confusing, or am I reading it wrong.?
It lists percentages (which should be per 100, right), but it says it is "PER 100,000" people...
so like "12.3 people" out of 100,000? (12.3 per 100,000)
Or 12,300 people out of 100,000? (12.3% of 100,000)
posted by blueberry at 12:07 PM on April 30, 2016


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