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Comment by aaavl2821 | Hacker News Reader

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US and causes more deaths than breast cancer (45K vs 40K) and over 6x deaths from HIV (~7K). 90% of suicides are related to mental illness.

It also takes younger lives than other disease. When combined with deaths due to "poisoning" (generally due to heroin / opioid overdose), suicide + poisoning cause more lost years of life before age 75 than any other major disease reported by the CDC [1]

Imagine how many more people have attempted or considered suicide, and how depressed these people are, and how much lost productivity is and unhappiness is involved in this

Really tragic how little attention is paid to this

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf

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If it makes you feel better, it's only the 10th leading cause of death because we've been extraordinarily successful in combating other illnesses like influenza, gastrointestinal disease, pneumonia, and tuberculosis.

Suicide rates have been going in the other direction in many places. Also masked in the stats is the actual rate. Straight road and car off the edge, overdose and various more lingering causes (substance abuse causing liver failure, heart attack etc). Those aren’t necessarily classified as suicide, but they can sure seem like it to those left.

Actually, suicide was the number 10 cause of death as far back as 1980 and deaths from suicide have increased 64% since then compared to 42% increase in US population. Deaths from pneumonia and influenza have been roughly flat on absolute value basis though decreased in death rate given the increase in population

Source is in a chart in this blog post I wrote, source data from CDC: https://newbio.tech/blog/vc_basics_1.html

>Really tragic how little attention is paid to this

Meh. I’d rather have the silence when the alternate is repeating useless memes at eachother and thinking it’s more productive than the silence.

Suicide is like mass shootings in one way... the media and popular conversation are only equipped to make the problem worse.

Do you think more awareness of and empathy for mental health issues and better resources to support depressed people are pointless? That's presumably what GP meant by "attention".

the media and popular conversation are only equipped to make the problem worse.

I posit that it's possible for this to improve. I further posit that said improvement hinges on allowing for such discussions to occur to begin with so we can work out a path forward to better conversations on such topics.

I agree and disagree. We should devote more total resources to the issue, but maybe not through media? I believe the government has 2 primary responsibilities: applying cost to externalities, and keeping it's constituents healthy. Everything else should be second class. If our (the US) nation's priorities were more than a half-baked set of corporate agendas we might actually have such a government.

It's catch 22. We need people to care about this, but shoving it down our throats on primetime tv isn't a productive way to accomplish this.

I think that more attention in terms of funding and research are helpful, but a better conversation at a societal level could be incredibly valuable. There is so much stigma and shame associated with mental illness and suicide. I know this is said so much it sounds cliche, but it is real and important. So many people could feel better but don't because they are ashamed of others reaction, or because our society's (US but probably others) attitude toward mental illness makes people feel they are bad or broken for experiencing mental illness. A more open discussion and acceptance of mental illness could be incredibly powerful

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