Hacker News Reader

Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

Yesterday we found out we're not having sex.

Today we find out suicide is increasing.

I wonder if the two are linked.

Probably, and I can make an educated guess how: modern society eschews the value of human relationships in favor of status and wealth seeking.

People find they are not happy, so they search for a path to happiness and our culture tells them that it is through being wealthy, famous, and successful. They search for a path to those things and find that it often involves long hours, greed, and psychopathic behavior. Human relationships are a risk, and risks are to be minimized. They put this knowledge into practice and find that it doesn't work.

My own theory of how depression works is that it involves an inescapable realization that your model of reality is broken and can't be used to make predictions that allow you to effect the change you want to see in your life. You wanted to be happy, society gave you a bad model to work from, and the mind's reaction to discovering that this model doesn't work is depression.

A very insightful comment. I have no idea to what extent your hypotheses describe reality, but the elegance of your line of reasoning deems this path worthy of further investigation.

Where does the sex come in?

Part of (some) human relationships. Being ignored at the expense of working towards success or building a brand towards status.

It's worse than that, it's active avoidance of human relationships because they're a liability. Not just because they create dependencies but because in order to form connections we need to make ourselves vulnerable.

Some people find sex pleasurable and emotionally gratifying. If you have a soulless job etc and you also aren't getting other pleasures in life, I can see that being a factor.

I mean, that's kind of a nutshell version of the issue. Human psychology and sexuality are complex. But I think it's a worthwhile detail to consider.

> My own theory of how depression works is that it involves an inescapable realization that your model of reality is broken and can't be used to make predictions that allow you to effect the change you want to see in your life. You wanted to be happy, society gave you a bad model to work from, and the mind's reaction to discovering that this model doesn't work is depression.

You should read the book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Jonathan Hari. I read it this summer, and it completely overturned how I look at depression (and other mental health issues). I truly believe that a lot of them (not all, mind you; there's also a lot of over-diagnosis) stem from a breakdown of what made us human, particularly relevant in American culture. It's a very interesting read.

My biggest concern is are we following a similar trend to Japan (low sex rate, high suicide)? While I am no means an expert, the overall theme that I've seen describe the phenomena in Japan is that they have just "stopped caring" about all the social pressures.

I wonder if Western culture is starting to have the same effect where the "rules of society" are just becoming so convoluted that people are "opting out". I'm looking at this more from the birth rate speculation, but not having a family to go home to at night and stressful work environments may have a connection.

> I'm looking at this more from the birth rate speculation, but not having a family to go home to at night and stressful work environments may have a connection.

There is. Having high stress competitive work prevents you to go to familly (because you are working overtime) and makes you loose it (whether formally or you just looses relationship). Conversely, having familly often prevents ones career and limits job opportunities.

But, I don't think western rules are convoluted. It is more that economy sux and tends to be winner takes all.

I would imagine that it gets excerbated when people can't afford to have kids and are required to get a double income just to survive.

Yes, they're both driven by economic inequality and a nation built for profits over people.

Suicide rate is much higher in more socialist countries: http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-c...

This includes France, Finland and Sweden is just right next to the US with much lower inequalities.

There are multiple factors correlated with sucicide, but notable is that the US rate has increased 30% during a time of decrease in suicide rate of other nations:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2018-07-...

This one lists Belgium, Finland, France as higher rates than the US. But other research also notes differences in rates of various races, I guess whites commit suicide at a observerably higher rate too.

This link of yours links suicide rate to social welfare spending, this is unlikely given that France, Finland and Belgium and specially Japan offer free healthcare and have much higher suicide rates. In fact, if you take out suicide by gun in the US, you get much lower suicide rates and it is a fact that guns make suicide easier and more likely.

The article hypothesizes suicide increases because of reduction in social welfare spending as well as social support. And notes some correlations, and calls for deeper study.

Suicide by guns don't count because?

Suicide by guns counts, it just diminishes even more the inequality cause because if you take out suicide by guns then suicide rates are even much lower than in these other countries with less inequalities and free healthcare but no suicide by guns.

I think that's a huge unknown assumption that if there were no gun, the victim would simply not commit suicide. There might be some dissuasion, but we have no way to gauge it - and pegging it at everyone in that group would be saved if only we took away guns seems like an assumption at one extreme end.

Not to complicate things more, but social welfare spending != efficient social welfare spending, leading to more potentially contrary (in both directions) trends.

It’s almost like there could be multiple contributing factors and there’s not a simple explanation.

How much is hidden by the US drug epidemic?

Agree, while not exactly the same I’d add up overdoses and compare both groups.

Your linked list has socialist Venezuela at #148 with 3.7 suicides /100k and now capitalist Lithuania at #1 with 31.9 /100k so the link seems unproven.

It's very difficult to compare suicide rates across countries. This is because they use different definitions. Your link doesn't say where they're getting their data and how they've fixed this problem.

I wonder if anyone knows how many opioid deaths are deliberate. The suicide rate could actually be much higher if this turns out to be a thing and is not included in the stats.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com