About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday.
I find it interesting how much western countries have individualised the causes of sadness.
It’s not that strange that people are often sick in a sick society. If you’re depressed, it’s likely that there are things that are causing or exacerbating that depression.
Give people homes, job security, less stressful jobs, and offer them a healthy work-life balance? Far easier to deal with and possibly even heal from trauma or serious health issues.
But that costs money. Selling people pills and self-help books? That makes money.
But that costs money.
It’s worth noting that a lot of solutions actually save money.
For example, universal healthcare is a big issue in the US. Around 2/3 of all bankruptcies are from medical debt. People ration lifesaving medication like insulin because of how prohibitively expensive it is. GoFundMe is of the largest healthcare providers in the country, and over 1/3 of all campaigns are for medical expenses.
They’ve created a system where it’s prohibitively expensive to seek necessary medical care, and is built on the foundational acceptance that people need to die and suffer for it to function as intended.
Yet a universal healthcare system is projected to cost the US an estimated ~13% less than they are paying.
Save taxpayers money, not the super rich. The system is working as intended for the parasites at the top.
Exactly its not about how much taxpayer money is being spent, it’s about who it goes to.
Around 2/3 of all bankruptcies are from medical debt
A bit misleading, though I get your point. 2/3 of people who file for bankruptcy have medical debt, not that the medical debt was the cause of the bankruptcy. Any dollar amount of medical debt factors into this statistic, so if I have $800 in medical debt with reasonable payments and I drown under a mortgage I can no longer afford and 20k in credit card debt, did the medical debt cause the bankruptcy? Of course not. It’s counted anyways.
A bit misleading, though I get your point. 2/3 of people who file for bankruptcy have medical debt, not that the medical debt was the cause of the bankruptcy.
Your assessment of this is incorrect.
The study I was referencing reports on people who specify that medical-related financial stress contributed directly to their bankruptcy. This was broken down by medical expenses and medical issues leading to loss of income - with medical expenses being the higher percentage at ~60%, and the combined percentage sitting between 65-70% (with overlap in responses).
Many cultures have issues with depression or suicide. Including ones with a focus on collectivism.
Work-life balance could be a part of the issue. That can be an issue for individualism or collectism. Although I feel like with individualism it’s easier to set your own standard.
The affordability of life is a problem as well but money being a thing won’t go away anytime soon.
Everytime I see suicide statistics like these. I don’t think of the deaths. I think of the misery each individual must have experienced in order to come to the conclusion that death was better.
Then I think about the nebulous political cloud surrounding these people and those who may have approached the conclusion but had the strength to carry on. I say nebulous because research is never going to encapsulate the reasons for one to kill oneself. If 50k in the US is the number who followed through, the numbers must be huge. I say this, because the suicide death statistic, is only the start of the problem - it’s a scale.
Misery festers at all of us. Labels, drugs and conversation can help, but it’s just burying the problem for it to resurface later. Until we start getting political movements towards human needs, this will continue.
I think of the misery each individual must have experienced in order to come to the conclusion that death was better.
That someone not only have decided that death is better, but also have gone through all the steps to act on it is a measure of their resolve, if anything. And as you’ve said, they’re still a rarity. On the spectrum of entertaining occasional thoughts to taking steps to actually doing it, the further you go, the less common it is!
That a lot of people have already gone this far, just how many more are mulling about it, questioning whether or not life is worth it, whether or not to do anything about it? And this “it gets better” mantra keeps some people from even speaking up! Why speak up when you’re just going to be slapped with a thought-terminating-cliché? It makes it harder to know how many people are miserable enough to entertain “bad thoughts”, and that the only objective measure we’d have is the number of people who’ve gone to the very end.
Honestly the number of people I’ve seen who are just living on the thought of “if I didn’t wake up tomorrow, that would be fine, except my mom might be sad”. And I mean seriously, not just the type of people who upvote posts of r/me_irl
My mom passed away earlier this year, right now I’m at the “maybe I’ll win the lotto… oh, time for the benzos” stage. Good thing I don’t live in the US and can get my daily dose for free… or is it.
Indeed. A quick check on the available studies on suicidal ideation (worldwide) led me to this study, which I can’t vouch for, but still gives me an indication that it’s not just our bubbles that’s led us to thinking it’s prevalent.
To quote its abstract:
The prevalence of SI (suicidal ideation) ranged across regions from 14.3% to 22.6%; the prevalence of SA (suicide attempts) ranged from 4.6% to 15.8%. Year was not associated with increasing STB (suicidal thoughts and behaviors) prevalence except for studies from the United States, which showed increasing rates of SI and SA since 2007.
Taking these figures at face value, around one out of five people worldwide have thoughts of suicide. Or by cobbling together estimates of world population aged under 25y/o and multiplying by 17% (harmonic mean of 14.3% and 22.6% to two sig figs), that’s roughly 550 million people. More than the US population, according to Wolfram Alpha.
Of course, that’s just very rough data, but still quite sobering if you ask me.
I’m just confirming here but prevalence implies that these statistics take into account size of the population measured? Like, suicide per capita has gone up?
If I am reading the abstract of the study I linked correctly, yeah. The percentage is of the population size (of youths–which I didn’t see a more stringent definition of).
The part I quoted also said, if I am understanding it correctly, that the year (hence, time) is only a factor in studies from the US. I guess you can say that it’s saying two different things. The “14.3% to 22.6” figure is for youth worldwide, but not accounted for time (hence, can’t say if it’s increasing or not). Then the studies from the US indicate that it’s rising (for the US).
I recently came to the realization that staying alive to prevent my share of an inheritance from going to the greedy bitch who married my father late-in-life is a reason to stay alive. That’s fucking sad as fuck.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my life. But when something so dark and grim can be phrased as a positive, things are really wrong.
Spite can be a very effective motivator too, you know, lol! To live in spite of the shitty world around us, I see that as kinda romantic, even heroic.
Yes, and it shows how many more actually suffer that much. Since only a minority of people actually follow through with suicide. It’s hard to estimate how many (try to) numb their pain with drugs, alcohol, gambling, food or whatever.
Gee, no healthcare, no mental healthcare, no dental, no public transportation, Republicans trying to cut social Security every five seconds and our taxes go to. . .what exactly?
Trump last gave corporations and banks about 1 trillion in tax breaks and that “trickled down” in the form of piss on your face and a final result of corporations laying off workers anyway and not strengthening the economy.
I know the solution! More guns! /s
Friendly reminder that statistics like this that aren’t adjusted per various should be taken with a grain of salt until the per capita* figures are available from the CDC.
Just like murder rates etc: if you take only the highest number of something and don’t adjust by population it’s unclear if it’s actually worse than it has ever been or not. It’s not even clear if it is worse than last year without per capita figures.
Not trying to minimize the tragedy of suicide but a lot of people read meaning into figures like this without context.
Good luck, this is anti-US propaganda and they’ll downvote you if you address it reasonably.
I’m from the US and just upvoted that. Please don’t stereotype. I know there’s a lot of idiots here, but we’re not all stupid.
I agree with it too and I’m not accusing Americans of being idiots at all, if that’s what you’re saying? I’m saying that lemmy is full of anti-American propaganda.
BS. Lemmy is extremely US-centric. The world is 8 billion, the US is not even 1:20 of that. Go take a look at Lemmy’s “All” feed, it’s more like 20:1 for the US.
Well it’s a bad comment, because I’m from the US and didn’t downvote. It’s also not propaganda.
Hmm… 31 upvotes and 2 downvotes so far…
Everything people need to live is getting more expensive, wages are stagnant if not falling with respect to inflation, and we are forced to work longer hours and have little hope for retirement. We are bombarded by stories of violence, drugs, and theft. Oh, and climate change is starting to destroy the livability of planet earth. There is zero surprise that people don’t want to keep living under these conditions.
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America is a fucked up shithole.
This will be a hot take for some but people opt out of a life that’s pointless, miserable, painful, and hopeless. Preventing people from access to methods of opting out is but a palliative measure.
Sure, people can be dissuaded from making an attempt by making it difficult, but isn’t it far better to address why people want to opt out in the first place? And of course, it’s best to do both: prevent people from making attempts, and address any issues they might be having in their lives. Even better, provide “end-of-life” care for those who really have had it enough for whatever reason.
Why lock people into a miserable existence anyways? Someone might have been prevented from opting out, but if conditions don’t change (and no, it doesn’t always “get better”), you’ve got a person will just resent even being kept alive. What good does that do?
Now, for the trash take: I suspect suicide is a problem because suits can’t make the line go up if people are killing themselves. The suits need people to consume and not kill themselves.
My best friend was one of them.
I was going to say my nephew too, but that was this year
It simultaneously feels like years ago and days ago
And this year is ten years since my son took his life.
I’m so sorry. I bet you still feel it every day. I can’t even imagine.
The short answer is yes I do. The long answer is that it is far more complicated.
if you want can we hear the long answer
Not ignoring this, just have not been able to put it into words (text).
oh alright thats fine take your time :). if i dont respond it’s not cause im ignoring you btw im just considerinf giving up all tech for a year for mental health soon
Sorry mate.
I know how you feel. It gets better.
I was almost one of them about a year ago. I was horribly depressed and constantly thought about ending it. It was to the point where I was even planning out the letters I would write and how exactly I would do it. Thankfully I never committed. I cut off pretty much everyone from my hometown and went to a different highschool where I found a caring friend group.
I’m glad you are still with us, please stay.
I intend to
People need hope that they can have a future and that it’s one worth living. Without that, despair is a natural outcome. If our societies cared half as much about ordinary people as we do corporations and the military, there would be a lot less despair.
rising cost of living wages not rising with them scam of a healthcare system you will own nothing unless you slave away for the rest of your days
Color me surprised
The article only benchmarks the total number to percentage of Americans once then just talks about the total number increasing over time. It would be much more helpful to just see this as a relative percentage to total population as I’d expect that number to rise regardless as population continues to grow. Not disputing the data, but think that would be a better way to analyze it.
Yeah the 2022 figures in that article are meaningless.
According to a more well-written article: the 2022 suicide mortality rate was 14.9 per 100,000.
AKA 0.149% so that really is a jump.
Dang, I missed the train.
There’s growth, thus everything is fine! /s
I think I’m going to do it soon, no point in continuing if I’m just going to be a joke for people to laugh at. Got my gun right here in the lower drawer of my desk, it’ll be quick and I don’t have anyone left either who’ll miss me. Daughter died in car accident 2 years ago, threw my wife out other day (I don’t miss her, she was nasty to me wanted to have another child to replace my late daughter) no one left to miss me or care about me. I’m also far out in the boonies so I bet I’d be a skeleton by the time I’m found by someone.
im not going to try to prolong your suffering but if you can, please try to do it in a hospital so your organs can be given to someone else. record a will so yiur ex wife gets nothing. check my post history, two of the most recent concern this.
I’m pretty sure my organs wouldn’t be given to anyone else, nor would my wife want anything I have, it’s all junk anyway.
body is bound to have something viable. have you looked at my posts
What could possibly be more important than you? What could supercede your will to life?
Surely the only thing that existentially matters to you, is you. Right?
I do believe it’s your choice. But I also believe that the choice is wrong. There are countless numbers of other paths to try that could instill an essence in you.
Try moving to a city. Try moving to another country. Try learning an instrument. Try a new language. Try finding a new partner. Try a new sport. Try finding new friends. Try hiking. Try a different job, or no job. Try a new book. I could go on.
Try anything and everything that could prevent you from coming to a permanent end.
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