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Comment by DannyB2 | Hacker News Reader

THIS IS NOT a politically motivated post.

Compare the map in TFA with this map, which I trivially Googled:

http://news.gallup.com/poll/203117/gop-maintains-edge-state-...

It's not a perfect correlation, but to my untrained eye, looking at both maps, it seems to me that red (eg, Republican) states appear to correlate closely with higher suicide states.

But please judge and compare the maps for yourself and form your own opinion.

Edit, add: one criticism is that the link I got from Google is a 2016 map.

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It is pretty well known that one of the demographics to see recent increases in suicide is white males, especially those experiencing economic stress. Since that demographic went pretty heavily for the Republic part in the last several elections, I think it's a pretty obvious possible explanation for the correlation you see.

Another statistic is that gun-owners are statistically more likely to successfully commit suicide. Red States have higher proliferation of guns, and often its easier to obtain a gun.

Modern paramedics can rescue people who take a lot of pills, or do other, less successful forms of suicide. But a bullet-to-the-head is often fatal. No coming back from that.

So it could be a case of "successful" suicides vs "unsuccessful". I'd assume that the rate of "attempted suicides" is roughly equivalent across the country. But an uptick in gun-culture could increase the number of "successful suicides", so to speak.

There is a running joke that all geographical heat maps are palette swapped demographic maps.

Often true, but this is a percentage increase so presumably it is fairly independent from raw population size.

% increase tends to favor areas with lower populations, because the divisor is smaller making everyone have a bigger impact. In this cases, cities tend to be more democratic and have more people to amortize losses against.

https://xkcd.com/1138/

Basically unless you are toeing the line on liberal issues you are non-desired - especially online.

So if you are a republican, or while, or a male, then you better not go online - and certainly stay away from cities.

Opioid use are highest among rural, white women IIRC.

https://wire.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/women-bear-greater...

Assuming "Opioid use" is the indicator of "negative emotions" of some kind, then the statistics at least indicate that we need to be focusing on white, rural women's issues primarily.

With that being said, there's clearly something wrong going on in rural America, at least if Opioid abuse and suicide rates are anything to go by. Just the stats.

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I hate to blame a complex issue like suicide on drugs. There's more to any particular case than just drug use. But with so many Opioid deaths in rural white America (especially women), I think this is a statistic that needs to be better known.

Note: It might be cultural (over-prescription by rural doctors), and not necessarily related to politics. But its certainly an issue that needs to be focused on.

The suicide rate is higher with men though.

I suspect men are feeling worse, but they are less likely to "treat" themself with opioid's or other drugs, just like men in general are less likely to treat medical issues.

More interesting might be shifts in party affiliations, also listed in that link.

https://xkcd.com/552/

First, one would establish that there is actually a correlation.

If so, then is there a causation? (eg, does being in a red state make one suicidal, or does being suicidal affect one's political views) That seems a bit of a stretch. But if a causation CAN be established, then is there anything that can be done to help people?

You forgot the third option: are both caused by a third independent variable.

For instance, economic situation could influence both political views and mental health.

Another possible correlation is aging populations. Among males at least, suicide is highest among males over 65. (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml) The "hypothesis" might be that lack of access to good health care among this group (either due to location -- rural health care is not in the best of shape right now from what I can tell (https://news.aamc.org/patient-care/article/health-disparitie...) -- or economics) might enhance suicide risk.

Access to firearms could be another correlation. Firearms are the leading method of suicide in the United States. The consensus opinion I've heard is that firearms are a lot easier to make an attempted suicide an actual suicide than most other methods.

All of these are hypothesis; I doubt we can come to real good conclusions without better data than these summary pages.

That is true.

There could be even other causes. Living in an area with less dense population affects one's outlook in various ways.

https://xkcd.com/1138/

Seems weird to start a post with a disclaimer that it's not political and then make a clearly political point...

Maybe people just REALLY hate working... https://thumbnails-visually.netdna-ssl.com/us-unemployment-r...

Or maybe unemployed people have such a bad time in central states that they leave, commit suicide, or just die off.

I'm not really making a point. Making comparisons like this or the OPs flagrant political comparison is silly at best and completely dishonest at worst.

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