Posted on 03/02/2015 8:50:36 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Suicide rates for adults between 40 and 64 years of age in the U.S. have risen about 40% since 1999, with a sharp rise since 2007. One possible explanation could be the detrimental effects of the economic downturn of 2007-2009, leading to disproportionate effects on house values, household finances, and retirement savings for that age group. In a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers found that external economic factors were present in 37.5% of all completed suicides in 2010, rising from 32.9% in 2005.
In addition, suffocation, a method more likely to be used in suicides related to job, economic, or legal factors, increased disproportionately among the middle-aged. The number of suicides using suffocation increased 59.5% among those aged 40-64 years between 2005 and 2010, compared with 18.0% for those aged 15-39 years and 27.2% for aged >65 years.
“Relative to other age groups, a larger and increasing proportion of middle-aged suicides have circumstances associated with job, financial, or legal distress and are completed using suffocation,” noted study authors Katherine A. Hempstead, PhD, Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, NJ, and the Center for State Health Policy at Rutgers University, and Julie A. Phillips, PhD, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, New Brunswick, NJ. “The sharpest increase in external circumstances appears to be temporally related to the worst years of the Great Recession, consistent with other work showing a link between deteriorating economic conditions and suicide. External circumstances also have increased in importance among those aged ?65 years. Financial difficulties related to the loss of retirement savings in the stock market crash may explain some of this trend.”
Using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), which links information on violent deaths from multiple sources including medical examiner and coroner reports, toxicology reports, law enforcement records, supplemental homicide reports, and death certificates, researchers were able to analyze 17 distinct suicide circumstances and four indicators related to planning and intent.
The suicide circumstances were grouped into three major categories: personal, interpersonal, and external. Examples of personal circumstances are depressed mood, current treatment for a mental health problem, or alcohol dependence. Interpersonal circumstances include an intimate partner problem, the death of a friend, or being a victim of intimate partner violence. Examples of external circumstances are a job or financial problem, legal problem, or difficulty in school.
The four planning and intent factors are crisis in the past two weeks, leaving a suicide note, disclosing an intent to commit suicide, or a history of prior attempts.
The authors caution that “increased awareness is needed that job loss, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and other financial setbacks can be risk factors for suicide. Human resource departments, employee assistance programs, state and local employment agencies, credit counselors, and others who interact with those in financial distress should improve their ability to recognize people at risk and make referrals. Increasing access to crisis counseling and other mental health services on an emergency basis, as is often provided at times of natural disaster, should also be considered in the context of economic crises.”
Our dear leader is counting on that...make enough pain and fear...it’s part of eugenics.
“Goodbye cruel world” becomes a more likely sentiment when the world in fact becomes crueler.
That doesn’t make it more responsible, but it makes it more understandable.
Is is easy when we see arguments and actions installing socialism among us to forget that when socialism does its ultimate impoverishing work, people are very badly affected. These suicides are terrible not just for the suicidal but for the many family and friends etc. that the dead one leaves behind. It is a shock that few ever “get over.”
We must fight evil economic policy because that’s what it is, evil, even if not intended to be so.
How anyone implementing socialist economic policy can’t “know” that it impoverishes everyone eventually is beyond me. History is consistent on this point.
Or is it cacogenics.
If you have a nuclear blast one thing that you can expect to survive is the cockroaches. Metaphorically speaking. They never had high aspirations. They only were intended to survive.
I remember my grandparents telling me that during the Depression suicide rates were just horrific.
If my wife is gone at that time eating a bullet is my retirment plan
I know I will not be spending my "golden years" in a nursing home soiling myself.
And the suicide rate for the elderly will only go up during Obamacare…guaranteed. They’d rather do it themselves than have the government do it less humanely.
Certainly, the Death Panels are primarily a financial tool to benefit SocSec and Medicare. They also help eliminate a (majority R voting) segment of the population.
This is one reason why Eric Holder is so despicable, because he gets so tied up in his witch hunts that he ignores what he should be going after. Not prosecuting crime invites more crimes which result in needless suffering.
White middle class, middle aged white men... my guess. That’s who liberals and the MSM are at war with...
Obama doesn’t want society “punished” with the elderly.
All the Øcare-provided end of life counseling will then come in handy...
If you like your EOL counseling, you can keep your EOL counseling. And, unlike everything else about Øcare, that is not a lie. Period.
The more socialism they dump on us, the more people are going to kill themselves or drink themselves to death. Heck, been going on in Europe for ages now. Welcome to Utopia!
i thought this article would be about older people in their 80s and above... people are living longer, but not all are necessarily thriving... i think it is harder on those who have been used to being independent... those who worked well into their 70s, those who were driving and getting around into their 80s... my parents are 89 and 91... i help care for them... they are generally physically healthy, but cannot get around like they did just 2-3 years ago... my siblings and i make sure to take them out places, spend time with them, have gatherings at their home... talk with them... and especially let my daddy tell stories...
I would credit the increase in suicides to the increase in atheism.
And when they take all my 401 k s whats the use
I’d agree with that.
Yet, they’re making it easier for libs & the MSM to win that war.
Id give my left leg to have just one more afternoon with my folks
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