Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[viper37]

Jumping off buildings doesnt appear very common.

Hollywood has lied to us again!

[grumbler]

Even if you remove all guns from the US, you would still have 50k suicides a year, it would just be with different means.
I don't think suicide is dependent on the tools at your disposal.

All the evidence says that this is incorrect.  90% of those who attempt suicide and fail do not go on to attempt it again (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/).  So making the means of the first attempt as difficult as possible will decrease suicide deaths.

[viper37]

Even if you remove all guns from the US, you would still have 50k suicides a year, it would just be with different means.
I don't think suicide is dependent on the tools at your disposal.

All the evidence says that this is incorrect.  90% of those who attempt suicide and fail do not go on to attempt it again (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/).  So making the means of the first attempt as difficult as possible will decrease suicide deaths.

Quebec&Canada have lots of gun controls, a general anti-gun culture compared to the US, and yet, we do have a lot of suicide.  Having more stringent gun control over the years have not affected significatively our rate of suicide.

I believe that when someone is decided to do it, really decided, they'll find a way to end this.

We agree that people with immense physical suffering can end their life prematurely.  I am unsure it is really wise to try to bring back from the brink someone who has decided to let it go.  I just don't know.

[Malthus]

Even if you remove all guns from the US, you would still have 50k suicides a year, it would just be with different means.
I don't think suicide is dependent on the tools at your disposal.

All the evidence says that this is incorrect.  90% of those who attempt suicide and fail do not go on to attempt it again (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/).  So making the means of the first attempt as difficult as possible will decrease suicide deaths.

Quebec&Canada have lots of gun controls, a general anti-gun culture compared to the US, and yet, we do have a lot of suicide.  Having more stringent gun control over the years have not affected significatively our rate of suicide.

I believe that when someone is decided to do it, really decided, they'll find a way to end this.

We agree that people with immense physical suffering can end their life prematurely.  I am unsure it is really wise to try to bring back from the brink someone who has decided to let it go.  I just don't know.

You may find this study interesting:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232252

Key finding: 64% of firearm suicides could be averted if firearms were not available; only 36% of would-be firearm suicides would simply choose another method. The authors estimate that the rate in the us would be 26% lower if it had gun controls.

[Berkut]

A considerably larger fraction would find other methods, some of which pose a greater risk to bystanders.

So your argument against gun control is that by giving people and easy way to kill themselves, it protects the lives of others?

Right now, in the US, there are about 50k suicides per year. About half of those are with guns.

For the remanining half, can you give us some stats on how many of them result in siginficant harm to others in the process, such that we could figure out how saving 25,000 a year from killing themselves will just end up killing a bunch of other people.

I am really curious to know the answer to this one. Who knew that  letting people shoot themselves was such a key factor in reducing the deaths and injuries to countless innocents caught up in the wanton carnage of non-gun use suicide!

Even if you remove all guns from the US, you would still have 50k suicides a year, it would just be with different means.
I don't think suicide is dependent on the tools at your disposal.

That is simply not true. In fact, it's so obviously not true I wonder if even you believe it. How can you possibly argue that the availability of a tool expressingly designed to kill humans doesn't result in greater incidences of killing humans when some human decides they want to kill themselves? We know that most people who attempt suicide do not do so again - that for many it is a spur of the moment action that is almost immediately regretted.

This is just from a Harvard study, so you can probably ignore it as left wing liberal bullshit or something.

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

In the United States, suicides outnumber homicides almost two to one. Perhaps the real tragedy behind suicide deaths—about 30,000 a year, one for every 45 attempts—is that so many could be prevented. Research shows that whether attempters live or die depends in large part on the ready availability of highly lethal means, especially firearms.

A study by the Harvard School of Public Health of all 50 U.S. states reveals a powerful link between rates of firearm ownership and suicides. Based on a survey of American households conducted in 2002, HSPH Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management Matthew Miller, Research Associate Deborah Azrael, and colleagues at the School's Injury Control Research Center (ICRC), found that in states where guns were prevalent—as in Wyoming, where 63 percent of households reported owning guns—rates of suicide were higher. The inverse was also true: where gun ownership was less common, suicide rates were also lower.

The lesson? Many lives would likely be saved if people disposed of their firearms, kept them locked away, or stored them outside the home. Says HSPH Professor of Health Policy David Hemenway, the ICRC's director: "Studies show that most attempters act on impulse, in moments of panic or despair. Once the acute feelings ease, 90 percent do not go on to die by suicide."

[Barrister]

I was going to try and convince Viper that the suicide rate in the US is much higher than in Quebec but in fact they were almost identical: ~13.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 per year.  That of course measures deaths, not attempts.

[Berkut]

Even if you remove all guns from the US, you would still have 50k suicides a year, it would just be with different means.
I don't think suicide is dependent on the tools at your disposal.

All the evidence says that this is incorrect.  90% of those who attempt suicide and fail do not go on to attempt it again (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/).  So making the means of the first attempt as difficult as possible will decrease suicide deaths.

Quebec&Canada have lots of gun controls, a general anti-gun culture compared to the US, and yet, we do have a lot of suicide.  Having more stringent gun control over the years have not affected significatively our rate of suicide.

Canada has nearly 33% fewer suicides than the US, as a rate.

Almost all of that difference, btw, is among men. Women, who tend to not use guns nearly as often, the difference between Canada and the US is less than 5%.

So yeah, your conviction here is based entirely on completely false data.

I believe that when someone is decided to do it, really decided, they'll find a way to end this.

What about the people who are not "decided" to do, not "really decided" and they shoot themselves?

WTF - do you actually believe that the only people who kill themselves are those who "really decided" to do it and are not going to be moved from that no matter what? Even though you know perfectly well that study after study after study has shown that to not be true at all?

We agree that people with immense physical suffering can end their life prematurely.  I am unsure it is really wise to try to bring back from the brink someone who has decided to let it go.  I just don't know.

You do know - you just said you knew, and you know for sure that despite that massive data that shows otherwise, reducing the availability of guns simply will not matter, and hence those tens of thousands of deaths are of no concern at all.

I will claim to "know" as well. I think it is very wise, and compassionate, to bring back someone who in a fit of depression, anxiety, or mental illness does something that might kill themselves, rather then just say "golly I don't know I guess we will just let them die"

[Berkut]

I was going to try and convince Viper that the suicide rate in the US is much higher than in Quebec but in fact they were almost identical: ~13.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 per year.  That of course measures deaths, not attempts.

Why would you compare the US to Quebec, instead of all of Canada?

Canada overall is at 10.3 per year, which is about a third less than the overall US of 14.7 per year. If we want to cherry pick the worst parts to compare, I would guess the rates in some parts of the US are much higher.

[Berkut]

I was going to try and convince Viper that the suicide rate in the US is much higher than in Quebec but in fact they were almost identical: ~13.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 per year.  That of course measures deaths, not attempts.

Why would you compare the US to Quebec, instead of all of Canada?

Canada overall is at 10.3 per year, which is about a third less than the overall US of 14.7 per year. If we want to cherry pick the worst parts to compare, I would guess the rates in some parts of the US are much higher.

To expand on this.

The overall US rate is 14.7. There are many state were the rate is over 25, like Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska. And many over 20 as well.

Continuing the trend....there is a direct correlation between suicide rate and percentage of households that have guns in them as well, in the US.

The data is pretty much irrerfutable. Gun availability is not the ONLY factor in suicide rate of course (poverty, mental health, access to medical care, etc., etc.), but there is no doubt that easy access to guns results in much, much more successful suicide.

And forget the data for a second. That is just obviously true. Access to a tool that is specifically designed to achieve a particular effect is pretty fucking obviously going to result in that effect being achieved more consistently.

[Berkut]

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-mortality/suicide.htm

[Malthus]

I was going to try and convince Viper that the suicide rate in the US is much higher than in Quebec but in fact they were almost identical: ~13.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 per year.  That of course measures deaths, not attempts.

Why would you compare the US to Quebec, instead of all of Canada?

Canada overall is at 10.3 per year, which is about a third less than the overall US of 14.7 per year. If we want to cherry pick the worst parts to compare, I would guess the rates in some parts of the US are much higher.

To expand on this.

The overall US rate is 14.7. There are many state were the rate is over 25, like Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska. And many over 20 as well.

Continuing the trend....there is a direct correlation between suicide rate and percentage of households that have guns in them as well, in the US.

The data is pretty much irrerfutable. Gun availability is not the ONLY factor in suicide rate of course (poverty, mental health, access to medical care, etc., etc.), but there is no doubt that easy access to guns results in much, much more successful suicide.

And forget the data for a second. That is just obviously true. Access to a tool that is specifically designed to achieve a particular effect is pretty fucking obviously going to result in that effect being achieved more consistently.

To amplify this with a digression:

depression is an odd thing, it can come with suicidal ideation (basically, thinking a lot about killing oneself) as well as an inability to plan and function. Often, these two things can cancel each other out somewhat - in that it takes a certain amount of planning and determination to kill oneself successfully, and the same depression that makes one think of killing oneself, also makes one so listless and apathetic that you don't actually do it.

This, by the way, is one of the reasons why some anti-depressants carry a seemingly paradoxical risk of suicide. They affect different symptoms of depression at different rates. It is perfectly possible for them to make the user less apathetic and listless, while not removing the suicidal ideation ... meaning that someone who had the ideation before taking the drug (but did not act on it), now has the drive and planning to act on it successfully ...

This also explains why guns can be very dangerous. As noted, lots of people who are depressed and have suicidal ideation lack the energy to carry out a difficult plan of suicide - so they don't (and then the depression goes away, they get treatment, or whatever). However, if a super easy method of suicide is available, one that did not take much planning or effort, they may use it.

[Josquius]

I was going to try and convince Viper that the suicide rate in the US is much higher than in Quebec but in fact they were almost identical: ~13.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 per year.  That of course measures deaths, not attempts.

You have to consider other factors at play as well as availability of guns.
The culture may lean towards melancholy and the link of the dark days in winter to depression is well observed.

[Malthus]

I have no idea why the provinces vary so much in suicide rates.

For some reason, Quebec and New Brunswick have a much higher rate than Ontario and PEI. Why this should be so, I do not know.

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/society/suicides.aspx

[crazy canuck]

I have no idea why the provinces vary so much in suicide rates.

For some reason, Quebec and New Brunswick have a much higher rate than Ontario and PEI. Why this should be so, I do not know.

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/society/suicides.aspx

I wonder how the rates break down within Quebec Ontario and BC.  Rural vs Urban - less mental health resources vs access to a wide variety of services perhaps? 

[Malthus]

I have no idea why the provinces vary so much in suicide rates.

For some reason, Quebec and New Brunswick have a much higher rate than Ontario and PEI. Why this should be so, I do not know.

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/society/suicides.aspx

I wonder how the rates break down within Quebec Ontario and BC.  Rural vs Urban - less mental health resources vs access to a wide variety of services perhaps?

Good questions - I also wondered whether the relative percentage of the population being First Nations would have something to do with it, as I remember hearing they have a higher average suicide rate than the non-First Nations population.