<p>I believe that one factor that could play into the increasing suicide rate is the decline of religion.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I don’t think these are publicly available but here are citations for two papers that show that yes, there is an association between increased firearm ownership/availability and increased suicides. </p>
<p>Miller, M., & Hemenway, D. (2008). Guns and suicide in the united states. The New England Journal of Medicine, 359(10), 989-91. doi:[MMS:</a> Error](<a href=“http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp0805923]MMS:”>http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp0805923) </p>
<p>Antonio Rodr</p>
<p>Mental illness that is under treated, poverty, unemployment and drugs are a bad combo. That combined with better reporting can explain a significant amount of the increase. Mental health services have been declining for many, many years, while reported mental illness has been increasing, especially among the homeless.</p>
<p>I posted year to year chart earlier that answer many questions here</p>
<p>In addition to all of the above I would add the rampant overuse of opioid painkillers, especially in women.</p>
<p>
It’s hard to be a “man”.</p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes - my understanding has been that acute suicidal ideation (by which I mean suicidal enough to actually commit suicide) normally only lasts for up to a couple of hours. If you can slow someone down enough, then they are less likely to actually carry it out. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, access to guns means that (a) they have easy access to a suicide method, and (b) that suicide method is highly effective in terms of producing the desired result, and it tends to do so instantly - compared to something like an overdose or cutting wrists, there’s no way that a bystander can do something once the trigger has been pulled.</p>
<p>Edit:
Having a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide, according to multiple studies, and two thirds of teenagers who attempted suicide took less than an hour between deciding to act and acting <a href=“To Lower Suicide Rates, New Focus Turns to Guns - The New York Times”>To Lower Suicide Rates, New Focus Turns to Guns - The New York Times;
<p>Suicide rates are also affected by economic recessions (which probably accounts for why it’s happening now) <a href=“http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5612[/url]”>http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5612</a></p>
<p>I believe you’re right, boom.</p>
<p>It’s so sad and almost always completely avoidable.</p>
<p>Saw a video on Facebook much better than this Ted talk that touched on the destructive nature of the phrase “Be a Man”. </p>
<p>[Be</a> a Man](<a href=“Be A Man: Joe Ehrmann at TEDxBaltimore 2013 - YouTube”>Be A Man: Joe Ehrmann at TEDxBaltimore 2013 - YouTube)</p>
<p>And people wonder why men commit suicide suffer from deeply roped emotional issues…</p>
<p>At least society is provided with evidence and is somewhat aware that woman are NOT the only suffering gender.</p>
<p>i believe no one brought up the obits. this is always bothersome to me. it is like depression as an illness does not exist. heart disease, cancer, dementia does but don’t dare mention died of suicide. i understand that the thought is that it may increase copycats - but all it does is make it hush hush. i have a coworker whose 17 year old son died of suicide by gun. the obit went on and on about how many friends and family and interests he had. it sounded like a perfect life - i guess that is what his parents wanted or could tolerate. i am not so sure that it might help to just say what they died from and take the taboo away. it reminds me of how in the past if you asked a patient if they were suicidal the thought was you gave them an idea to do it. really? like if you talk about birth control or offer condoms or the pill they will have sex.</p>
<p>i believe that the increase of suicide is because it is reported more on the death certificate, that the instant and permanent means are now readily available- guns, and there is less acceptance of failure at life’s challenges.</p>
<p>Also… Strangely, the ability to look up “how to die” on the internet might also be having an impact. Access to information that might have previously been difficult to find. Could this “research” lead to a numbing in preparation to kill oneself, a numbing that would be needed (for most people) to overcome the natural aversion to pain? IDK. Just a thought.</p>
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<p>doschicos,</p>
<p>I think that you hit the nail on the head with this comment.</p>
<p>More people living alone?
How can they afford to live alone?
Two bedroom condos in my neighborhood (1091 sqft), run $600,000+
One bedroom condo (726 Sqft), is $429,000.
The economy must be really great if people don’t need a roommate to pay the mortgage.
I live in a blue collar, lite industrial neighborhood, btw.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure they don’t go for a $400,000+ condo…</p>
<p>Somebody’s buying them.
Its crazy.
Im just glad we live on the wrong side of the street to build condos.</p>
<p>Someone earlier asked me to talk more about my work in the mental health field. I was an Occupational Therapist and specialized in mental health OT with adolescents although I had a couple jobs with adults also. My first job out of college was with adults. A suicidal adult would be hospitalized inpatient and put on meds while receiving individual and group therapy as well as occupational therapy and nursing education groups focused on medications and wellness. </p>
<p>After about two weeks in the hospital, when they seemed to be doing better, they’d go on a day pass on a Saturday. They’d come back, process how things went, how they felt, etc. The next weekend they’d go on two day passes- come back, process how things went, etc. The following weekend they’d have an overnight and if that went well, they’d be discharged. So they were in the hospital for 5-6 weeks usually with day passes as “trial runs” to being home and time in between to work on themselves therapeutically. Family therapy was done also. We rarely saw patients come back because they had taken the time to really get stable, have the meds working, understand the importance of them and learn about their illness. </p>
<p>Fast forward about 10 years- the average inpatient length of stay had been reduced to 3-5 days. Patients barely had time to get on the meds and they weren’t working fully yet by the time they left. They had no trial runs to see if they were ready to handle it “out there”. There was barely time to build a trust relationship with a patient, let alone do anything really therapeutic. There were several patients who came back every couple months. I worked at one adult inpatient hospital from 91-94 and in that time, one patient had come back 24 times. Really? I was supposed to do an assessment, treatment and discharge planning in 3-5 days, with the same person 8 times a year? Broken system. </p>
<p>Adolescents- This was my preferred area and I spent more time working in adolescent psych than adult. Same type of thing though. When I first started, we were looking at 3-6 month length of stays and we really worked intensely with these kids and saw tremendous progress. My last job as an OT was in adolescent day treatment. They came to our program from 9-3 instead of going to school. They were not in an acute crisis that required hospitalization, but were close to it or had just been discharged from it. We worked with their home schools to obtain their school work and we had a teacher on staff. They had 2 hours of education, 2 hours of OT, 1 hour of Group Therapy and 1 hour of Nursing education. They also had individual and family therapy sessions each week. The first year- they stayed about 4 weeks and we rarely saw them come back or go to the inpatient unit. Later, it was down to a week. Again- you’re not going to get most teenagers to trust you enough to let you in at all to do therapy work in a week. </p>
<p>Insurances paid a small fraction of our actual daily cost per patient. The hospital was struggling with what to do with both the inpatient and day treatment adolescent programs. Out of fear of being laid off, I started looking and realized that there were no longer ANY other adolescent inpatient or day treatment programs in my county or the one south of us that we serviced. And, I don’t live in an easy county- it’s the count that Detroit is in. There are a couple programs in the metro Detroit area now, but they are in the northern suburbs. It’s a severe disservice and it makes me sick to this day. If I ever win a huge lottery jackpot, a significant chunk of it will go to fund an adolescent program in Wayne County, MI. It’s so sad. And the suicide rate is up.</p>
<p>I think people are losing hope. Hope for jobs when they have been lost. Hope for supporting their families. Hope for being able to climb out of financial holes.
I also think a lot of people fear what the future holds for them and their children.
There is a big divide in our country these day and it makes it hard to look forward to better times .</p>
<p>More willingness to report things as suicide, more willingness to report mental illness, more claims of mental illness without the resources to go with, and maybe too much willingness to over-simplify mental illness as “a chemical imbalance”, adding to some hard, un-answered questions regarding the disparity in treatment.</p>
<p>
This relates to our pill happy society. Many of the ailments of today can be solved with a hangs of lifestyle and mindset.</p>
<p>Blame the insurance companies.
Medication is often covered, while therapy is not, or to a much lesser extent.</p>