Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshuahedlund | Hacker News Reader

Suicides declined in 2020 [1]

Cost benefit analysis is important. But it's pretty clear the vast majority of excess deaths were covid related, because there's a very strong correlation between excess deaths and reported covid cases/deaths, even when you look at different states that had different peaks at different times, and no such correlation to other responses like different types of lockdowns. More delayed / indirect / long-term effects might be harder to measure though.

[1]https://www.axios.com/suicide-decreased-in-2020-pandemmic-me...

View on HN

Weird, the first result when I did a search claimed it went up to 14.8 per 100,000 this year, from 13.9 per 100,000 last year according to the Google summary, but the actual page doesn't seem to actually have that data: https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measur...

Looks like the CDC data is still preliminary? So I guess we'll have to wait and see what the actual number is.

EDIT: Looking through the charts on that link it does list a 14.8 for 2020 suicides but doesn't seem to have a source?

Likewise, you should cite a source for your statistics in your original post.

Isnt that true during many major world events that are bad? I cant remember the study but I recall reading that during WW1 and WW2 suicides declined greatly even though it was a terrible time for many.

This is going to depend which place and group of people you talk about. Suicides of Jews in Germany went up by the start of WW2 - source is Richard J Evans; Third Reich Trilogy. He had no stats about non-jews. But, being oppressed and humiliated definitely made some Jewish Germans to kill themselves. (Convolute phrase, but plenty of them considered themselves Germans, so.)

And it was much easier to commit suicide by lettin other people kill you too.

America is might be different, because it did not happened on their soil.

> being oppressed and humiliated definitely made some Jewish Germans to kill themselves. (Convolute phrase, but plenty of them considered themselves Germans, so.) <

They — like my grandparents —considered themselves German because they were German.

The othering of Jews, that they are not really English/Spanish/German/Russian (to name a few examples), has been used to justify the persecution of Jews for the last 2000 years.

Because you don't think too much about your own suffering when you hear about the suffering of others... probably.

Yeah, but some claim overall "deaths of despair" went up [1], which is probably better to use here.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/deaths-of-despair-during-c...

For example, overdoses and suicides are often quite difficult to distinguish.

Suicidal ideation does appear to have increased: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm?s_cid=mm... But it doesn't correlate well to actual suicide rates. It's also quite possible that the emphasis on suicides has in fact raised awareness enough to prevent them. Or perhaps the way people are dealing with the stresses that lead to suicide has changed, resulting in that being expressed in some other way. Or a mix of all these factors.

That's an assumption made off incomplete data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com