America's Suicide Rate Declined in 2020 - Despite Lockdowns (cbsnews.com)
- Reference: 0144856440
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/21/04/09/2233223/americas-suicide-rate-declined-in-2020---despite-lockdowns
- Source link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-decline-united-states-covid-pandemic/
> The number of U.S. suicides [1]fell nearly 6% last year amid the coronavirus pandemic — the largest annual decline in at least four decades, according to preliminary government data. Death certificates are still coming in and the count could rise. But officials expect a substantial decline will endure, despite worries that COVID-19 could lead to more suicides.
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> It is hard to say exactly why suicide deaths dropped so much, but one factor may be a phenomenon seen in the early stages of wars and national disasters, some experts suggested. "There's a heroism phase in every disaster period, where we're banding together and expressing lots of messages of support that we're in this together," said Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. "You saw that, at least in the early months of the pandemic." An increase in the availability of telehealth services and other efforts to turn around the nation's suicide problem may have also contributed, she said.
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> U.S. suicides steadily rose from the early 2000s until 2018, when the national suicide rate hit its highest level since 1941. The rate finally fell slightly in 2019. Experts credited increased mental health screenings and other suicide prevention efforts. The number fell further last year, to below 45,000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a [2]recent report . It was the lowest number of U.S. suicide deaths since 2015.
MarketWatch also points out that in the U.S. in 2020, " [3]Total deaths increased by 17.7% year over year, the provisional estimates showed.
"COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer, while suicide dropped from the country's 10th leading cause of death to the 11th.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-decline-united-states-covid-pandemic/
[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778234
[3] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-shouldnt-be-complacent-suicide-deaths-fell-during-the-2020-pandemic-but-why-11617887838
Curses! (Score:2, Funny)
Foiled again
Rate of gun ownership rose (Score:1)
The number of guns sold also has been going up. So not really a coincidence. The heroism phase of the pandemic is probably a good and accurate supposition for the drop. Once this is over, expect the rate to go back to where it was and keep rising.
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Sure, the number if firearms is up, but ammunition has been in short supply. Perhaps the answer is what Chris Rock said all along, drive the cost of each bullet up to $5000 and watch murder/suicide drop.
[1]https://www.gunsandammo.com/ed... [gunsandammo.com]
[1] https://www.gunsandammo.com/editorial/2020-ammo-shortage/387068
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> So instead of people killing themselves, you have people walking around wishing they were dead.
I knew a girl in high school who was driving with her two younger siblings in the car and was hit head on by someone trying to suicide. I wish someone had given the asshole a gun. And stop calling that "gun violence" since it can be worse without the gun.
This has been studied in the past (Score:2)
and it's more likely [1]a general slowing of the pace of life [arstechnica.com]. e.g. people aren't going to work & school and forcing themselves through miserable experiences to earn money or prepare to earn money. Stimulus payments and eviction moratoriums also likely have an effect.
Basically we reduced the key stressors that make people kill themselves.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/recessions-dont-lead-to-an-overall-increase-in-deaths/
But auto accidents are up despite less miles (Score:2)
Could the rise in single car accident deaths be misclassified as accidental and actually mask a hidden number of suicides?
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Possible, but its possible that high road speeds overbalanced the fewer traffic miles. There were also a lot of people who were out of practice from driving infrequently. There is probably data on the type of accidents and speeds. You would expect auto suicides to be very high speed crashes into solid objects, with the driver not wearing seat belts. That should show up in the statistics if its there.
Re:But auto accidents are up despite less miles (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how things were in your area, but in my major US city, it was like GTA out on the highways when the pandemic first hit. The lower levels of traffic and policing led to some seriously reckless driving. I drive like an old lady, and decided that it was better to just take surface streets than dealing with the maniacs on the highway.
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DUIs. They never shut down the pot shops and cocktail lounges through the pandemic. People are not working and don't have a boss to answer to for being sh*t-faced.
Not likely (Score:2)
insurance companies relentlessly investigate those to avoid paying out. If people were faking suicides in car accidents then they'd be finding that out because they have a strong financial incentive to do so.
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Step 1: acknowledge people/companies are motived by financial incentives when it fits your narrative
Step 2: disregard everything from step 1 when the government pays the state for COVID cases/deaths and assume the numbers are legit
www.fark.com/politics -- yup
Re: (Score:1)
> mouth breathing retard
The hypocrisy makes me angry too. But instead of channeling it into comments about retards, question the narrative when it doesn't make sense. It is quite freeing.
Re:But auto accidents are up despite less miles (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the rise in single car accidents would indicate that the single-car-suicides are misclassified. This has been reported for decades.
The issues for actual knowing is the lack of evidence of suicide notes in some cases.
While this articles reports that suicides are down, other reports say sucides are UP. Who do you believe? Which reporting group has the strongest motivation to lie, that is, misreport or mis-classify the deaths. Personally, the source for this post is thoroughly lacking when other sources came out previously and on the opposite side of the argument.
One thing that is universally reported is that suicides of K-12 children has risen sharply. So maybe the overall has gone done but the "For The Children" demographics has gone UP -- that is, children are committing suicide and noticeably higher numbers. I cal BullShite on this article!
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Wouldn't later, larger datasets provide a better picture of what happened during the last 14 months? Do you have data to refute this bullshit?
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I came to this thread fully expecting the QAnon Contingent to be well represented here, and they did not disappoint.
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I know this is the festering GQP persistent suspicion. And it didn't take long to appear in this story.
But note, actual individual doctors, write down the cause of death on death certificates, not some deep state cabal designed to take down Trump. And the truth of the matter is the number of Covid deaths were under-reported - especially early on when testing capacity was limited.
[1]https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
[2]https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/new... [umn.edu]
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-false-claim-that-covid-death-counts-are-inflated1/
[2] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/01/study-us-covid-cases-deaths-far-higher-reported
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Serious question - Do you actually believe that doctors gets paid by the federal government by filling out death certificates?
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> Serious question - Do you actually believe that doctors gets paid by the federal government by filling out death certificates?
No, they get paid by their bosses - hospital administrators.
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No, they don't get a check for filling out death certificates. More COVID deaths isn't going to be worth more. If anything it'd be worse. Doctor's risk getting resources diverted from what they're doing to the efforts to fight COVID.
My kid's in a residency program and it's basically useless now because all the teachers are off treating COVID patients and the kid's stuck doing line work instead of training (which they took a pay cut for)...
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Yes, yes they do!
Hospitals are the largest employers of doctors, as actual employee or 1099 employees, and doctors are pushed/encouraged/[favorite coercion term] to classified as much as possible as the novel coronavirus.
Federal $$$ goes to areas of higher covid deaths and cases. How do you think these entities get the Federal $$$? By misreporting/mis-classifying. After all, what's the harm in reporting death as due to covid when the patient has covid. It's the Andrew Cuomo Effect.
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> ,Serious question - weren't COVID deaths worth more Federal dollars than non-COVID deaths?
No. There was some legislation early on that allowed Medicare to pay more for COVID-19 cases than for other respiratory infections, because a much higher number of those patients were put on respirators, which is an expensive proposition.
There was never any "bonus" of Federal dollars for COVID deaths. In fact, if the patients died of COVID, hospitals often received less in Medicare payments.
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>> ,Serious question - weren't COVID deaths worth more Federal dollars than non-COVID deaths?
> No. There was some legislation early on that allowed Medicare to pay more for COVID-19 cases than for other respiratory infections, because a much higher number of those patients were put on respirators, which is an expensive proposition.
> There was never any "bonus" of Federal dollars for COVID deaths. In fact, if the patients died of COVID, hospitals often received less in Medicare payments.
Thank you. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo!
You win the Prize today!
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The marking of troll is accurate, my comment is tongue in cheek, but based on truth. Nobody is suggesting a deep state cabal... nobody except for you anyays... just mindless bureaucrats making poor decisions as usual [1]https://www.wandtv.com/news/wh... [wandtv.com]
[1] https://www.wandtv.com/news/why-and-how-covid-19-deaths-are-tracked-in-illinois/article_2085ddaa-93e8-11ea-b1c2-7fd058d907cf.html
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How? "This person has no trace of COVID in them, and has half of his brain missing due to a bullet going through the top of his mouth through to the back of his skill. Clearly a COVID death..."
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> I wouldn't be surprised if the increase in suicides caused by lock-down were falsely attributed to COVID deaths
In Virginia, if you die for any reason and you have a covid symptom, then it's counted as a covid death. So a bullet through the brain and a cough is covid.
As opposed to New York, where covid + nursing home = death by old age.
Re: Covid Deaths (Score:1)
The CDC removes them from the list when they receive the death certificate stating suicide.
Age Brackets (Score:5, Insightful)
Mental health people have been saying teen suicide was up 150%.
Are many of the normal suicides elderly people who are at the end of their healthspan? Because lots of them got wiped out by the virus.
A single scalar can't tell a useful story.
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Agreed. One of my wife's best friends deals with people (primarily teens to early 20's) with mental health issues. She's said many times that this group of people has had a really hard time with isolation and social distancing leading to an increase in suicides and attempted suicides. As this is her job I'm more prone to believe her and her resources over CBS. But I also tend to trust JAMA and follow them closely. Maybe there is an increase in certain regions but overall it's down? Dunno...
Something seems o
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AFAIK Japan showed a decline in half of 2020 but then a great increase when the second wave of covid struck the country, perhaps that effect is just delayed in the US? Also this bit from TFA "The CDC has not yet reported national suicide rates for 2020, nor has it provided a breakdown of suicides by state, age or race and ethnicity." so it seems that the report is not for the full year of 2020 yet?!
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Teen suicides (and moreso the number of teens considered at-risk) are what scare the living shit out of me. Even among kids that have maintained reasonable normalcy to their lives there is just this air of abstraction and a disconnect with people that I hadn’t noticed before.
But, at the same time I’ve seen a number of kids that are excelling and really growing with covid. There might be a wealth gap between the two groups that would explain away much of it, but there is more to it.
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Under 25 makes a a small percentage of suicides. Middle age make up the highest percentage young people have been viciously torn from their developmental social structures, with limited maturity, so it makes sense that more of them with limited social skills off themselves. For most older adults, the pandemic has not been so bad. If you were ok before, and you kept your job, it was just a shift. The US government has increased benefits, ended evictions, prevented cancelation of insurance. And yes more pe
Gender Breakdown (Score:3)
It would have been nice if they provided a gender breakdown of the stats. Prior to 2020, men in the US were committing suicide at a rate 3 to 4 times that of women. So was this decrease in 2020 spread equally across both genders or did it impact one more than the other?
So... Trump brought down suicide rates? (Score:1)
If he gets the blame, I guess he gets the credit too?
to broke to buy a noose... (Score:2)
anyway, what I really want to know is what the divorce rate will be after so much tire wear on relationships from the last 12 months of being cooped up will be...
Yepp. People are forced ... (Score:2)
... to be more chill. That sure helps.
He died of natural causes (Score:2, Funny)
“He jumped out of a window!”
“Gravity is natural.”
“I’ll just put down Covid-19.”
Maybe it's the people with social anxiety (Score:1)
Who aren't killing themselves now because the lockdown is making life easier for them.
FAKE NEWS (Score:2, Interesting)
Lynnwood repeatedly told us more people would die from suicide due to lockdowns than from covid. I trust him.
Re: (Score:1)
I love how this was modded down. JIDF has a stranglehold on the moderation. Chinks are the ones paying for these spam stories.