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.
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.
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.
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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Stop killing yourselves and kill the fucking bad guys, you cowards. Every one of those lives could have been used to make the world a better place for the rest of us, and instead they all just quit.
Whose the bad guys?
Mostly the people actively destroying the planet that we all live on, attempting to murder our entire species.
You seem to fit the category with your calls for murders
So everyone, got it.
You got a list?
Nope, sorry. It tends to correlate strongly with wealth and power though.
murder is wrong
That plan works real well until the person decides the ‘bad guy’ is a minority group they don’t like, a certain nationality, or even society in general then they go and burn a mosque, fly a plane into two towers, or attempt to release sarin gas in a metro station.
There’s no one true ‘bad guys’. The whole idea of good vs bad is driven by what you put value on. If you held individualist values you might see collectivists as the bad guy and vice versa.
You gave examples of a bunch of objectively bad people and then said bad is subjective. Hard disagree.
If only the forces of evil are willing to kill and to die for what they believe in, then evil wins, forever.
Is it an ideal solution? Fuck no. It’s wildly messy and uncontrolled. But the bad guys are winning, and they have been for a while. Continuing to do nothing isn’t going to fix anything.
Even if we both agree those things are bad that doesn’t mean that are opinions aren’t subjective. The people who try and do those things didn’t wake up in the morning and say to themselves “I’m going to do something evil today.” They consider themselves heros. That’s why those are subjective not objective.
You’re exact logic is the same as those who perpetrate those acts. They believe that their targets are the evil.
There’s a fair bit of space between sticking our heads in the sand and encouraging the suicidal to commit assassinations that we can operate in.
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
I know how you feel. It gets better.
Sorry mate.
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.
You’re right. But I care, if even for this breif moment. Take care, when you can. I hear you. ❤️
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.
Excessive doomerism isn’t popular among those that don’t share your experiences
What the fuck? How privileged are you? Your so fucking caught up in whack dumbass pop “doomerism” that you think gang shit doesn’t go on… Your pathetic. Wake the fuck up and walk through a ghetto you pathetic piece of shit. I’ve almost been murdered literally… have you…? Have you? You piece of privileged piece of shit? I’ve had people shoot guns outside my house and threaten to kill my family and your pathetic ass wants to call it doomerism? Wake the fuck up and get smacked out of your precious privileged life.
You never want to know what it’s like. Every day I think about killing myself because of the reality I’ve seen. And you want to call it doomerism… Jesus Christ America’s dead as fuck.
Imagine someone threatening to kill your mom or dad or sister or brother… Ive fucking lived that. America’s fucked. And all because I came in contact with the wrong person randomly. I literally went to the police and they don’t care. I literally got laughed at. America is fucked to the core. You people are so pure and desensitized from holywood you think the reality of humanity is fake. It’s disgusting and pathetic. But let me guess you change your whack ass Facebook profile to support the latest cause… Piece of shit.
Don’t think the underprivileged dont see you fake people pushing pop politics, you are seen, and you won’t be on the same team if a civil war comes along.
You misunderstand me. You were complaining about downvotes from people who don’t share your experiences. You were also claiming that absolutely everything is terrible, here.
Yes, you’ve had bad experiences. I don’t doubt that. But the downvotes come from those that don’t share your experiences and completely disagree that “everything is terrible.” You’re labelling absolutely everything bad based on your own personal experiences and, while I get it, is not really how things work
Yep. Extreme egoism is great if you’re a winner, but horrible if you’re not. And most people are not winning.
I would argue it’s not even good even if you are winning.
Even if you strike gold and get rich, what use is all of it if you’re alone?
Well, you don’t have to be alone and you don’t have to be super rich to be a winner.
Even a western middle class person is a winner. Not winning as much as Musk or Zuckerberg, but still winning.
A nation that’s not good to the people who aren’t winning is not a good nation
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
American culture was deeply scarred by the cold war in ways that I don’t think many people realize. Over the last 80 years, the pursuit of self-interest has come to dominate every aspect of life and in turn degrades any attempt at community or helping one another. It’s quite sad actually. The America that gave my grandparents the opportunity to drag themselves out of poverty has turned around and eaten itself alive.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Sort of. If they all worked together they would have been better off, even for their own class. Working together and further monopolizing businesses for American industries would have made them much richer (probably at the expense or other economies, but I guess we’re just talking about “the west” so thats slightly irrelevant). Every other American would be better off too, but that might mean Elon Musk is worth 100 B instead of 180B and Larry Ellison is only worth 70B. But there would be a lot more Billionaires and a heck of a lot more millionaires. But that isn’t how game theory works I guess, and that would be boring for them… they have no national allegiances anyway.
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).
But that costs money. Selling people pills and self-help books? That makes money.
I am sorry but this is a ridiculous implication.
The vast majority of prescribed antidepressants (I’m assuming this is what you mean by pills) are old drugs with long expired patents, which makes them quite cheap. The profit margins have to be pretty low due to competition from generic formulation manufacturers. This is an area that actually could use more investment into R&D.
Self-help books are usually written by individual authors or small collaborations. It’s profitable but not massive industry. The people profiting from self-help books are not anywhere near to being able to influence people getting homes, job security and work-life balance in either direction.
I’m sorry maybe I’m a little triggered because this hits close to home, but seriously how the fuck can people claim “oh suicide is going up because guns”
Are they fucking blind to how things are going in the world? I’m so fucking livid right now. “Suicide is because guns” fuck off
Guns don’t make suicide more likely, they make them more successful.
Some people are hell bent on taking any step possible to prevent suicide besides being there for their friends. The answer to the suicide problem shouldn’t be suicide nets. The problem isn’t the means it’s the motivation.
Hint to a friend that you might feel suicidal, now you have 10 fewer friends who “don’t want to deal with your shit”.
Guns don’t cause suicide, but they make it much easier to successfully complete suicide
Handguns especially
But I doubt an increase in suicides this year from last year has anything to do with gun ownership rates
I made a serious attempt once. I am anti-gun and didn’t have access to one. I tried a different way. If someone is serious, they will find a way. (I’m doing much better, thanks)
If you would have tired with a gun you would have succeeded. That’s the point about guns and their availability.
Guns are the most fatal, but even then only have an 80% success rate:
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/
I personally knew a guy who tried and failed, living with 1/3rd of your brain missing is not pretty.
Suicide number decreased when we switched the type of gas ovens used. Use to be that you could stuff up your windows and doors, turn on the oven, and slowly drift to sleep into death. Now you will just be slightly warmer. Of course, that is a supply side solution. And just like the republican war on drugs, supply side solutions never get rid of the underlying problem.
America is a fucked up shithole.
