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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
My best friend was one of them.
Sorry mate.
I know how you feel. It gets better.
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
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.
Dang, I missed the train.
There’s growth, thus everything is fine! /s
I believe it. This place sucks. Criminals and assholes everywhere, at least in my life. People claw at you and fuck you over until your suicidal. I have no respect for America at all anymore. It feels like having to live with seeing your rapist everyday.
That and nobody cares. I sent out goodbye texts to a lot of people in my life. Literally no one cares. I’ve had people try to push me to suicide, stalk me, and give me death threats since 2020. Cops don’t care.
Ok first of all I get you, as someone from Europe, the greatest strengths of America often sound like the biggest weaknesses to me.
And then ofc if you wanna talk about it I’m here and I will listen :) hope you’re doing good.
Literally can’t talk about because I get death threats because I made some bad people mad. And I know what they are capable of.
All my social media is watched by them.
Edit: I always get down votes for my real life experience posts. The world is fucked, you just shut out anything that goes against the privilege you were born into. Life is death war and chaos. You can either live for humanity or continue making rich criminals richer while you deny reality. I’ve seen people get other people murdered by cops on purpose. It’s real. This is America… There is zero hope.
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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.
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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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I will probably get shit for this, since it’s a predominantly left leaning space, but until society starts acknowledging men’s issues it will keep getting worse.
https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics
In 2021, men died by suicide 3.90x more than women.
In 2021, firearms accounted for 54.64% of all suicide deaths.
This article is an excellent example of what I am talking about. It does not even mention the disparity of suicide rates between the sexes despite it obviously being a huge outlier. Instead, they talk about how guns are the problem, even though a gun is just a method.
Taking away the easy methods to commit suicide might reduce the rate, but it does nothing to address to core issues that make people want to kill themselves in the first place. Instead of 5000 dead people you will have 5000 people who wish they were dead. Mission accomplished.
I will probably get shit for this, since it’s a predominantly left leaning space, but until society starts acknowledging men’s issues it will keep getting worse.
???
What left leaning circles have you been in? I think we all know men have issues too?
In my left leaning circles it’s pretty well understood that feminism is about helping women. And that’s a good thing. Trying to make feminism an ideology which serves all genders is problematic because it implies an omniscient perspective counter to proper intersectionality. Men experience oppression but only men can represent their oppression in discourse.
Women can’t and shouldn’t feel like they can have an opinion on men’s issues. “Stay in your lane” comes to mind.
How far do you take this perspective? As a lefty that doesn’t sound like a very leftist take, rather it sort of completely eschews the principles of solidarity and reason-based argumentation…
I do agree that feminism is about helping women (and that’s great!), but should mothers not advocate for better mental health resources for their sons? Should I not advocate for better access to birth control for the women in my life because I’m male or for Ukrainian liberty because I’m not Ukrainian? Denying someone access to public discourse about a topic because they’re not suffering the consequences of the topic seems a bit silly to me. And of course, men do actually suffer under patriarchy, albeit in a different way than women obviously.
I am taking some rhetorical leeway towards a more radical presentation of the perspective, for clarity.
Solidarity can only be achieved once people can recognize one another as equals, and “women tell men how men should advocate for themselves” is not equal recognition. Of course women don’t think they’re womansplaining the oppression men experience.
I don’t believe in reason-based argumentation. Reason is how consent is manufactured. I trust reason only within the confines of the emotional message a so-called rational actor is emitting within the performance of the ritual of discourse. Too many women have been told to shut up for being ‘unreasonable’ for me to take reasonability all that seriously.
Certainly mothers should perform their motherhood within this lens. Their motherhood is centered, not the primacy of their opinion. The mistake the essentialization&monopolization type feminists make is centering feminism, when an ideology is not a cure for anything except the nagging sensation that if we come up with and communicate the right ideas the problems will go away.
Regardless of your gender, you are coming across as quite unreasonable.
I’m not even sure the point you’re trying to make.
Then read it again. And don’t police tone.
Oh yeah no clue why you’re coming off as unreasonable.
I can’t think of a single left leaning space that is not concerned or empathetic about the mental health of men. I can think of several right leaning spaces that dismiss men’s mental health struggles with “stop being a snowflake and man up.”
but until society starts acknowledging men’s issues it will keep getting worse.
Good news. We’ve moved on from ‘man hating’ on the left. Intersectional Feminism actually espouses the fact that men are also harmed by the patriarchy and all the ridiculous demands that it puts on us, like not feeling feelings. You should look into it.
Expecting women to help men is like expecting men to give women the right to vote suddenly on their own initiative.
If you’re essentializing the left you’re stuck in meaningless ideology. “Kill All Men” is a good T-shirt and let’s not pretend women shouldn’t look out for women. Intersectional Feminism might have good ad copy but expecting an ideology to cure all problems is a broken (and male-oriented) way of viewing the world.
“If we just get the ideology right the hard work will disappear!” No, men are still going to have to help other men and “Intersectional Feminism” is still going to be either 1) a way to a more nuanced feminism (a good thing for those feminists to develop, don’t get me wrong), or 2) an Extremely Online project of no real consequence.
Why do you think men aren’t participating in feminism? We’re men helping men over here.
