Why is suicide becoming more common?

Life has always be stressful; but over the last decade or so, it has become down right brutal. I used to want to live to be 1,000 y/o because I loved life!!! Now, between the press & politics, all I hear are negative hopes for my future. Everything that I worked so hard fighting for has been deemed non important. I find myself worrying about the future of people who don’t have a clue what future they want. Try as I might, I can’t STOP worrying & feeling hopeless. NO, I have NO desire to commit suicide; however, I have lost my fear of death!!! I’m noticing that I frequently fear living much more than I fear death!!! We have been taught in my lifetime that death is PEACE…so they are NOT searching for death…they just NEED PEACE!!!

Chaos in the world, precarious employment situations, Orangutans sitting on the big red button.

I read this recently, still processing in relation to today’s decreased suicide rate. Perhaps with social media, we simply are more aware of them.

“Violence isn’t natural to the human animal. It’s a product of despair.”

In 2016, the IHME estimates a total of around 817,000 suicide deaths. This represents a small reduction from the late 1990s where annual deaths were around 850,000–860,000. The largest share of suicides is within the 15–49 year olds category which accounts for approximately 60 percent of deaths.

https://ourworldindata.org/suicide

Lots of different reasons. Not everyone has all reasons:

1. smaller families, less of a family support group if things are going wrong.
2. prevalence of divorce (related to #1 above)
3. high health insurance costs making help either unavailable or unaffordable
4. reduced government spending on social programs
5. religious institutions getting more involved in political action than helping people (anti-abortion activism, for instance, being more popular for some denominations, than mental health)
6. Laws against euthanasia
7. Politicians making simplistic promises, setting up an aura of disappointment when the promised actions don’t take place.
8. tribalism and a feeling of belonging to the ‘wrong’ grouip

I was inspired to write this after hearing about the death of Anthony Bourdain, someone who inspired a lot of happiness in my life. To think that even he felt he had no reason to continue to be here is incredibly crushing.

I have my own ideas about this worrying trend, and of course they’re just thoughts and speculations and I would not venture to pass any of them off as cold hard fact. I do think that the rising population of the world is a major contributor. With increased population comes more stress (higher cost of living, more difficulty finding a job, more traffic, thus more anger, more contempt for other people) as well as less sense of identity and purpose (there are millions of others like you, so what sets you apart?), and a disconnection from nature and spirituality (it’s much easier to go through the motions when so much is already done for you). I think social media, rather than making us more connected as it seems to do on the surface, has severed personal connection, the kind that requires people to be there in person and share a real connection. I also agree about the loss of family support. We’ve pursued many solutions blind to the problems we’ve been creating in their wake.

These factors also help explain the rise in drug abuse, which is really just another method of self-obliviation.

I don’t know where we’re headed, but it doesn’t look promising.

When Robin Williams died I was horrified that the man who had given us so much happiness ended his life feeling completely hopeless. I felt so freaking guilty for feeling the joy that he so willingly passed out. I felt some relief when his family announced it was due to an incurable disease.

Anthony Bourdain’s eyes had that same sad look that Robin Williams had during his final days. Sadly, for those who loved him, we may never know what actually created his quest for PEACE!!!

Partly due to the weak presence of Religion in the community. I’m not saying that it is essential for everyone to adopt a religion to minimize the risk of suicide, I believe religion provide the grandeur illusion of hope for those who have lost hope and the ability to induce fear through the promise of hellfire for those who dare to think about suicide thus become more dependable to prevent the act of suicide.

@Unofficial_Member Religion also provides a strong sense of community for people. A way for people to join together in their collective concern with something bigger than themselves. Religion also places a value on life that many lack. If we don’t value our lives, then what’s preventing us from ending them?

@Demosthenes
Vodka.

My heart just stopped!

Two jelly’s in a row saying religion could be a (gulp) good thing? That was always my argument back five years ago here, if it gives a person hope or something to strive for, that’s a good thing.

@KNOWITALL – you missed my comment about how religion has gotten too politically involved and has forgotten its mission

@elbanditoroso I didn’t miss it, but I feel differently than you. Frankly I think people would like to think abortion has no negative consequences, but facts don’t lie, we just don’t talk about it. To each their own.

A recent American study came up with similar results, examining the medical records of 173,279 low-income women who had abortions in 1989. Four years later the annual suicide rate was found to be 160 percent higher among the aborting women than those who delivered their babies. (study link)

http://www.life.org.nz/suicide/suicidekeyissues/abortion-and-suicide/

@KNOWITALL When you hear about people killing each other over sectarian differences and look at religion being used as a weapon, there’s a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of it, but you can’t neglect the positive side of religion. Religion is a universal part of human culture and has been for all of human history; maybe it’s not so beneficial for people to be missing that building block of culture.

Every day of my life, I encounter kind, respectful people who hold doors for me, leave spaces for me to enter traffic, and share lovely interactions in public places.

Then, at least once per day, there’s someone who’s unnecessarily rude and belligerent, perhaps even threatening. I really don’t recall such levels of hostility, with such frequency and no provocation, when I was younger. All of my friends agree that this cultural aspect has greatly changed for the worse. If something nasty isn’t directed at me, I watch it happen to other people.

I find that it takes several of those pleasant encounters to restore me after one of the bad ones. Also, my life of the past year – one traumatic crisis after another – has left me much more brittle than I once was. Things that wouldn’t have bothered me before, or that maybe would have made me roll my eyes and laugh, are now very troublesome. I find it very terrible.

It all makes me wonder if someone who’s much more fragile than I am, a person who’s truly desperate and hopeless, might decide to give up. If somebody’s on the edge, for whatever reasons, can those extra doses of despondency push that person over?

These are hard times on people’s dreams.

All you need to do is look at questions here where people ask for support in desperate times of need and there’s always that one person and those who agree with them who think their terse words and their “truth” is helpful. Guess what? Your words aren’t helpful. They’re self-centered and cruel. Learn some fucking compassion.

@Love_my_doggie Yes, such actions can easily push another over the edge especially when they’re feeling fragile to begin with!!! I have experienced it firsthand. Fortunately for me, life had a different plan than I did!!!

On the other side, when I was only 25, I waitressed in a bar in Virginia. It was an extremely busy Friday night & the other waitress had called in sick so I had the place to myself. As was my habit, every time the front door opened, I made eye contact with the person coming in, smiled, & welcomed them to our place telling them to sit wherever suited them best assuring them that I’d be with them shortly. One of those people was being extra grumpy & I could tell he was having as really bad day. I took his drink order. When I took his drink to him, he was pulling out his wallet to pay me. I placed my hand over his wallet assuring him that since I’d never seen him before I assumed it was his first visit & his money was no good as his first drink was on me. Then I gave him a hug. He grinned, blushed & said thank you. He had several more drinks for which I did take his money & suddenly he was gone…leaving NO tip. I cursed him for the rest of the night for neglecting to leave a tip. The guy at the next table saw what had happened & he handed me $5 for the cheap bastid…his words not mine. I had the morning shift on Saturday & just as we unlocked the door, the same guy walked in. I made eye contact, smiled & welcomed him back. I handed him a menu just in case he wanted lunch. He took my hand & apologized for being such a jerk the night before. Then he told me that he had every intention of committing suicide once he got home the night before due to spending his day in court with his wife getting a divorce & taking everything he owned. Then he said that when I looked up & smiled that all those bad feelings went out the window & the kindness I had shown him made him realize that NOT every woman was like his wife. He realized once he got home that he had failed to leave a tip. He reached into his pocket & handed me $25 & gave me a big thank you & hug for saving his life. He had only spent $6b the night before.

I did absolutely NOTHING different to him than I did to any other person walking through our door that night except buying his first drink that he looked like he desperately needed. His story made me realize how easily we take for granted what other people are feeling & how easy it is to just smile & be polite to others. Since then, I make it a habit to smile & be polite to practically everybody I meet just in case they are feeling like this guy did on that fateful Friday night!!!

^^^ I’m deeply moved by your story and grateful that you took all that time to share it.

Frankly, I believe there is a growing perception that “im screwed, no matter which road I choose.” But who knows? I know optimists who claim the uptick in suicides merely reflect
a declining fear of death in the society at large.

I think fewer people actually have established morals and/or ethics. Without these, the purpose in life becomes less firm.

And what “morals” would that be? Lynching blacks? Beating up gays? Oppressing women? Blaming Jews for deicide?

And that, @ragingloli, is exactly what I am talking about. You don’t even have a clue what a moral or what ethics are.

More and more people are becoming used to the idea that there may be no afterlife, and they want to go on living. Having not thought about it much when they were young, now they are faced with the question: Is this all?? Some can handle it, some can’t.

There is a growing belief the we must live in the moment, because the past is gone and the future does not exist. This is a very dangerous trend.

Human life is devaluing.
Population rises. Numbers of people with skills rises.
It is the same with any resource. The more there is, the less the value of each.
That is why killings are becoming more frequent also.
Human life is no longer viewed with the same value as it has been in past.
The web adds to that. The more we know about the rest of the world, the smaller individuals become.

Fatigue. Often it’s that seemingly simple. Crushing fatigue.
Again and again I have read or seen interviews, or talked to people who have survived failed attempts, and the most prevalent thing I see/hear is fatigue. Often the conscious intent is not to die so much as it is to stop. I’ve felt this this fatigue and it’s crippling.

A thousand things can contribute, physical and emotional, but a lot of it boils down to fatigue.

@seawulf575
Religious people certainly do not. Burning witches and unbelievers is, after all, doing god’s work.

@Patty_Melt That’s the way it often seems to me; I think in part life was more valued in the past not just because there were fewer people but because it was much more fragile. People often didn’t live past infancy; disease ravished populations regularly. There are exceptions of course: people were regularly enslaved and executed in times past, which doesn’t seem to show much respect for life. But those threats might have at least made people want to hang onto their own life more.

It’s likely as simple as what has become the modern lifestyle. People of all ages are at an all time level of poor health and depression while at the same time more demands are being placed on them. Young people have basically been systematically lied to throughout their youth about what adult life will be like and they enter with such high expectations that more or less come crashing down in mid-life or before. “Stuff” is cheap but necessities are often out of reach to many. I think the physiological balance that humans are supposed to have is increasingly under attack by the “norm” shifting more to sedentary activity levels, poor nutrition, being overly medicated and having both high expectations and also demands that cannot be realistically met.

Suicide is about ending suffering be it emotional or physical. Nobody “wants” to die outside of that.

Relationship issues and financial troubles are the top reasons. Lack of mental health care and the easy availability of firearms are also factors.

Firearms are not a reason. They are seldom even the tool.
Most suicides involving firearms are suicide by cop.

“Most suicides involving firearms are suicide by cop.”
No, those are just murders.

Go have another pint, Loli. You are talking from the wrong orifice again.

You would not be so uppity, if you had a bomb in your chest.

:-)

Firearms maybe aren’t a reason but they make it very easy to kill yourself. A half of all suicides involve a firearm according to the CDC.

Opiates make it very easy to kill yourself.
Buildings with roof access make it easy to kill yourself.
Bridges up kinda high make it easy to kill yourself.
The question wasn’t how, it was why.

Of the friends that I’ve lost to suicide, NONE have been a self inflicted gunshot. Several were by the slicing of the wrist.Most were some combination of sleeping pills often mixed with alcohol. One girl did try using a gun but she failed miserably. The bullet somehow deflected off of something, spun around her brain, & God only knows what else. It left her brain damaged, her sinus cavities caved in so her face was contorted into such a mess that children scream when they first see her. She can barely talk. After her, the others found a safer way!!!

@ragingloli Your views of religious people are not current, you know that right? I’m going out on a limb here but witches haven’t been burned for about 325 years in America (before it was a country), but only about 300 years in the whole world. Your statement suggests you are just struggling to avoid actually having to address your own understanding of morals and ethics. In the modern day, of course.

Religious “Morality” has not changed in 300 years, only their power to enact it.
Give them their power back, and you will have fiery stakes back in town centres in record time.

I’m going to blame Facebook. The woman I lost my virginity to just got married and bought a house. looks around my apartment for my gun

If you are unhappy do you.

@ragingloli that is why my statement of you not understanding what morals or ethics are. Okay, here’s the challenge: describe your morals/ethics exactly, not in generalities and certainly not with dodges. But here’s the catch: You are not allowed to use ethics described in the bible since you view them as basically evil. I’d love to hear this one.

Lack of morals is not a reason why there are more suicides and neither is lack of religion. If you think so you need to educate yourself on the subject. Sorry to burst a few bubbles but religion does more harm than good for many. Religion is judgemental. People kill themselves because their religious parents and peers won’t accept them for who they are.

Morals and ethics are those things that give us direction in life. When they lack, our lives are aimless, not fulfilling. You can’t be fulfilled if you have nothing to gauge yourself against. Basically, every person that has killed themselves has come to the point of “what’s the point of going on?”

Morals and ethics are not a religious construct. Why ever would anyone think that?

@canidmajor exactly. I did not make that connection. My morals and ethics are based in Christianity, but that doesn’t mean I feel everyone’s should be. I will challenge others, though, when they come up with outdated and inaccurate examples of Christians or religious people in general. I do that to point out to them that the morals and ethics from the bible are a decent set to live by. But my comments concerning the impact on suicide is that people need an established set of morals and ethics to live by. You have to set what is right and wrong in your life. And you have to stick to it. Without something guiding you, you flit from position to position until you have no idea who you are or what you want out of life. That’s a pretty depressing place to be.

you crack me up. A Trump devotee claiming ethics and morality essential to direction.

You crack me up because you are so obsessed with Trump that all questions come back to him for you. Did my comment somehow invoke Trump for you? You even call me a Trump devotee so you can work him in. You do realize your obsessed, right?

According to Harvard, having access to guns is a huge factor in the suicide rates:

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

Having a low paying job, little or no access to healthcare, having a dangerous nincompoop running the country (while being elected with the help of a foreign government, after losing the popular vote) doesn’t help. Many people feel desperate and like they have no control over their finances, their health, or their sense of happiness and well being, and that their ideas of right and wrong have been turned upside down.

It’s funny…many people felt the same way under the last president.

@seawulf575 please stop derailing the thread.

As with many other subjects, it entirely possible that the increased access to news accounts for the apparent increase in suicides. This, plus the fact that people as less likely to cover up the real reason someone died.

It was seawolf who got derailed. He was right on topic.

I don’t understand why these people kill themselves by hanging. It’s really not a pleasant way to go. If I were to consider it, and I’m not, I might go with something like injecting myself with an entire vial of insulin.

I’m a chicken too!!! Hanging & anything involving a gun are NOT even a consideration. IF I was going to check myself out, I think sleeping pills would be my poison of choice. Falling asleep & just not waking back up is my idea of the best way to go!!!

@canidmajor that’s just it. Fatigue. Many don’t know how or simply no longer want to deal with it.

And that is almost certainly because IT grows increasingly more strenuous and difficult to deal with.

@seawulf575 It should be apparent by now that YOU are my obsession. You and Yellowdog are fascinating, because the 2 of you can read and write, yet somehow conclude that Trump and his behavior fit the acceptable parameters defining a President. Trump is merely one in a limitless field of narcissistic sociopaths. But you and those like him are the true fascination. You’re the trunk on Trump’s elephant.

Guys, get room. Really. This is a *ood thread withoutnyour off topic crap.

K

Good boy!!! LoL

the major wields an impressive whip. Besides, it’s probably best to steer away from topics even less pleasant than death and depression.

Omigod, just saw all the typos. Sorry bout that.

I’ve read typos for so many years that I read what you meant & not what you said & didn’t even notice!!! LoL

@canidmajor An apology is insufficient (and thanks for passing me the whip). Now submit to the flogging you so richly deserve.

Now that the topic is unspeakable typos who would care to join me in kicking the major since we clearly are without fault?

NOBODY is ever without fault; so, my Dear, you are now on your own!!! ENJOY!!!

I alone am faultless? Another unexpected disappointment. By the way, I noticed that you immediately turned down the whip when the major handed it to you. Such sentiments are counterintuitive under a Trump administration.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{ @stanleybmanly )))))))))))))))}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

You are NEVER alone!!! I just know when to get my tender tushie OUT OF THE WAY of a whip no matter who is in control!!!

The only way to assure you aren’t in the way is to hold it yourself.

I beg to differ…I still have the scar from the last time I held one!!!

oh God! Now the topic is self flagellation?

NOOOOOOOOOOOO…just really bad aim!!!

Should we return to death & depression. The mod will almost certainly disappear the last 10 or so entries anyway. How many tattlers threw flags? Cmon fess up!

That’s how I avoid death & depression!!!

By tattling & throwing flags? I don’t (won’t) believe it. Or do you mean you avoid death & depression by talking about it? Or maybe you avoid death & depression through wielding the whip?

Naw, by adding humor to an otherwise depressing topic…sorry to all the tattlers…I’ll try harder to control myself next time!!!

Stop whipping yourself! You’re a standup broad!

So I guess we’re done discussing the topic. Too bad, there were some interesting perceptions for a while.

We left off with a decline in ethics and morality as a possible contributing factor in rising suicide rates, but I am much more inclined to believe rising economic hardship as more plausible.