The trouble with talking about the uptick in suicides as a reflection of trouble in our culture
Let me get a couple of things straight: the first is that there has been a recent uptick in suicide rates in the US, as I wrote about yesterday.
The second is that there have been plenty of things about our society that I believe have been increasingly going wrong in recent years, as well: for example, lack of community, a breakdown in the stability of the family, weakening of shared values, and the rise of social media as a substitute for face-to-face community.
As a result of the news about the suicide states, we’ve seen quite a few articles like this one making claims such as this:
But why are so many more Americans getting to this level of emotional despair than in the past? As journalist Johann Hari wrote in his best-selling book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression ”” and the Unexpected Solutions, the epidemic of depression and despair in the Western World isn’t always caused by our brains. It’s largely caused by key problems in the way we live.
We exist largely disconnected from our extended families, friends and communities ”” except in the shallow interactions of social media ”” because we are too busy trying to “make it” without realizing that once we reach that goal, it won’t be enough.
All of these observations are useful and true, but there’s one thing everyone seems to be ignoring, something I wrote about in yesterday’s piece but no one so far seems to have commented on. So I thought I’d emphasize it here: the rise in suicide rates follows a fall, and the present-day rates in the US mimic the rates in the 1950’s through the 1990’s.
You can look at the charts if you don’t believe me. I linked to them yesterday and I’ll link to them again, but I wasn’t able to embed them here when I tried, now I’m having trouble getting there at all because it seems to suddenly be behind a paywall. Here’s the chart for the rates in the US from the 1950s till 2015; click on “Death rate for suicide in the US 1950-2015 and it indicates that suicide rates from the middle to the end of the 20th century were similarly high, and then there was a dip. The present rise seems to be restoring suicide rates to something similar to the older levels. The recent report uses rates from 2015 and 2016, which corresponds pretty much to the endpoint of the chart I just linked.
Anyone trying to analyze and understand the phenomenon of suicide needs to take the actual statistics into account.
That’s quite interesting. Not to get into the Correlatoin/Causation thing but wow.
Could it be the Cold War took quite a toll on the collective psyche? What other factors could be at work?
Very interesting.
Very interesting Neo, over all male and female int 1950 was 13.2 per 100K people and in 2015 it was 13.3 per 100K people and over the years the numbers varied however thanks to your information it appears that the story is there is not much of a rate of increase story at all. Of course suicides are tragic especially friends and family and since we think we know celebrities there is an emotional factor there too. Very interesting how human nature works.
Neo notes that the chart for US suicide rates is no longer freely available. All but the most recent data were published in “The Statistical Abstract of the United States” in a table entitled “Death Rates for Suicide, by Selected Characteristics.” (https://tinyurl.com/ybegzfzn) For what it’s worth, white males have always dominated suicide statistics. Oppressors, even in death.
“The Statistical Abstract” had been published every year since 1878, when in 2012, the Obama administration canceled the publication in a supposed cost-saving measure. There were widespread protests by journalists and librarians, two groups that otherwise offered unreserved support to the administration.
To this day, no one knows why the longstanding principal source for statistical data on the United States was canceled. Most transparent administration in history.
The paywall is there for me and also the stats Cornflour linked too want me to log into google when I already am logged, so I’m not prepared to do that in case it is fishing. Still I get the picture – an unexplained return to the normal rates of suicide is the real story here. My own view is that the dip is probably the product of something deeper than politics. However I think it is important to remember in looking at an apparent society wide phenomena that suicide is something that is immediately a function of the individual and their immediate family system. If we had good stats to do a deeper analysis the demographics of the 50s rates compared to today’s might show important differences for example. However it would take a really knowledgable statistician to see if it were possible to tease out the changes in the way suicide is reported in different periods. I think what may be the bigger story here is how access to the facts are apparently being limited so that the public is shut out or discouraged from discovering the information it has paid taxes to collect.
Igude:
Here’s a link to the same data in pdf format:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2013/035.pdf
You’ll need software for reading pdf files. Since pdf files are so common, most people have installed a free reader. If you haven’t, I’d recommend Sumatra pdf reader. Here’s a link:
https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/download-free-pdf-viewer.html
The link I provided, in my previous comment, was to an Excel spreadsheet file. To read the file, you’d also need to have software installed. I use LibreOffice, because it’s free.
The spreadsheet file comes from “The Statistical Abstract of the United States.” The pdf file comes from the CDC (Center for Disease Control). Both are US federal government publications. Neither have anything to do with Google. Neither would be “fishing” for a Google logon. I’d speculate that you were prompted for that information because you have a Google account, and your computer didn’t find viewer software on your hard drive.
Google includes a spreadsheet file reader on their “cloud” servers’ “office” software. When you sign up for Gmail, or some other Google service, you automatically get access to their version of “office” software. At least I think that’s still true. I stopped using Google products a while ago.
The data from Igude and Cornflour, which is analyzed by age as well as gender, presents a more checkered picture. The suicide rate among younger people (15-44) has definitely risen since 1950, especially younger males (15-24). The suicide rate among older people has declined. neo’s take that it has essentially stayed the same I think averages out these two trends, one of which is disturbing though most of the rise took place 1950-1980. Also this data ends at 2011 so it would be useful to make a similar breakdown on the recent “uptick” to see how it related to these trends.
The most recent table of CDC statistics on suicide is at this link:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2016.htm#030
This table covers 1950-2015. Data is presented in the same way as the tables I’ve mentioned in previous comments. The table is available in both pdf and Excel spreadsheet formats.
Of course, there are other CDC publications on suicide, but this table is good to look at in conjunction with Neo’s post.
Interesting; thanks for this.
If you think about it: The Depression, WWII and Korea, there were millions of people hit with tough times, even what we call trauma these days…. ; and everyone was just leaving it to Beaver.
Beaver couldn’t handle it.
Dam.
Think of Greg Peck in “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,” a wonderful and insightful movie, about a war hero come home, still dealing with things of the war.
If he hadn’t been such a strong and noble guy, and his wife even more noble and amazingly loving; and if he didn’t have as a new friend a more than honorable judge, think of the mess this guy could have been in: Whiskey River.
I don’t know how it was for the rest of you growing up, but during the 1950’s and into the late 1960s I recall that suicides by gunshot were commonly reported as “accidents” (“He was cleaning his gun”), at least on the local grapevine.
I don’t know whether the use of this euphemistic fiction carried over to the world of medical examiners and the keepers of vital statistics, but I suppose it’s possible. And I don’t know how prevalent it was. If it was the common practice back then, I wonder how accurate the older suicide-by-gunshot statistics are. One would expect a lot of very serious (but undiagnosed?) PTSD cases in the male population due to WWII, Korea and Vietnam…
1) Neo again calls data “statistics”, a miscall she has previously made. “Statistics is a branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data.” [from Wiki]
2) The data are best looked at by age and by sex, not as a lumped-together “suicide rate.”
3) I chose to look at the male and female rates as graphed by Neo’s link, Statista. Males suicide at about a 3:1 ratio over females in the entire period 1950 to present. Both curves have minimal upward slopes. so one can say the (pooled) “suicide rate” has changed little, especially when the denominator is 100,000.
4) There was one spike, in females, in 1970, from 5.6 to 7.4. There can be no ascribable reason; they were not GOP women suiciding themselves in anticipation of John Sirica and Watergate.
Suicide seems to me an entirely personal act, taken due to individual circumstances and some sort of mental illness. Then again, what do I know, I’m no expert; I suspect Powers is not either. Blaming the current culture is convenient but misguided. As the data indicate, any uptick in the rate recently is small. Big name suicides (Williams, Cornell, Spade, Bourdain) attract attention and make us inclined to notice.
People kill themselves and when they do I always feel sadness, especially if it is someone I know, which thankfully has not been often.
Cornflour, I thank you for saving me the trouble of hunting for the data.
Other ways to get the data: In General: Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012 (131st Edition)
Specifically: Section 2. Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Divorces
Report Number: Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012 (131st Edition)
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2011/compendia/statab/131ed/births-deaths-marriages-divorces.html Graph 128
I recall hunting through the Statistical Abstract or the 1860 Census to find out that from 1850-1860, agricultural production in the Midwest exploded, thanks to newly constructed railroads to take the goods to market.
The problem I have is I dont trust any of the statistics. I believe, but have no way of proving this, that suicide had a much larger social stigma in the fifties and was probably under reported, especially in small towns.
As an example, the Japanese under report their murder rate and over report their suicides by classifying domestic family killings as mass suicide.
So, these trends, may be meaningless comparisions since you cant trust any of the numbers.
I think that one overarching factor is the pace of change, and each individual’s resultant lack of stability and “rootedness.”
Our relatively recent ancestors (and many of us old timers, as well) were born into physical, social, and psychological landscapes that were relatively stable; there were familiar structures of various kinds–buildings, landscapes, places, family structures, memories, and histories, ideas, customs, organizations, expectations, traditions, and behaviors that anchored us, and them.
We had the naive expectation that they would still be there, essentially the same, a year, or decade, or several decades hence; a place of safe harbor in a storm.
But, ever since, say, WWI or WWII, the pace of physical, social, psychological, religious, and economic change has accelerated, sweeping away or radically transforming almost all of those former places of stability, those anchor points we all–to one extent or the other–relied upon.
Realize it or not, this, I believe, has had a major destabilizing effect on everyone.
Just one point–
In doing genealogical research on recent ancestors-say those living around 1900 or so–I was amazed to see just how many fraternal and other organizations many of them belonged too, as listed in their funeral notices and obituaries.
All those odd sounding organizations that must have given them some comfort, “rootedness,” companionship, and a sense of belonging have long since disappeared.
And the trend continues, as even larger major fraternal organizations report major decreases in their memberships, and a current generation of potential members who are no longer interested in putting on a funny hat or some regalia, and joining, no matter how noble the organization’s aims might be.
Suicide rates have always been the highest in the older age brackets. As our population age distribution shifts towards this older age bracket, the overall rate will gradually increase. This shift is expected to continue to shift for a couple more decades. As for the drop between 1990 and 2000 I don’t know unless there was a change in the way they were reported. There has been a noticeable uptick in suicides among the very young since 2009. Possibly economic prospects but more likely social media IMO.
Smow On Pine:
Your social-rot thesis begins with the birth of Progressivism in the early 1900s, its secularisms (self-worship, man is perfectible, Darwin, etc.) and, latterly, scientism has taken over. Thus everything has a secular discoverable by research cause, and if we can only discover those causes, we can prevent depression and suicides, inter alia.
We are perfectible and thus are already almost perfect! Vote Democratic!
If you think of all those stabilizing anchor points as the connective tissue of the “body politic,” as composing a major portion of the fabric of the nation’s social cohesion, that enables a society and it’s individual members to function effectively and to thrive, you can see how the disruption/destruction/radical transformation of that connective tissue, those many elements of social cohesion, might have a potentially disastrous effect on any society and nation.
The Left’s deliberate, all-spectrum Gramscian attack of these last 70 or so years has had as one of it’s main aims achieving this destruction of Western bourgeois society’s social cohesion, and has frequently steered, intensified, and sped up the changes brought about by naturally occurring historical events, economic, and social developments/trends.
Another example of the deterioration of what I have termed the “anchors,” the “ties that bind” us together, the “safe harbors” that are some of the key stabilizing factors for individuals, families, communities, and our nation is the fraying of our deep historical and ancestral memories.
In ancient times the Egyptians and Romans were big on remembering their ancestors, and in countries like China, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia it has been the custom from time immemorial for people to remember their ancestors, to visit their graves (in China graves often sited on the best prime farmlands to honor their ancestors), and I believe that these visits and the memories and remembrances they generate were and are an invaluable stabilizing influence for those societies and their members.
I am not suggesting that we convert to Ancestor worship, but it is pretty clear that these customs and remembrances of their ancestors made some contribution towards giving these societies their longevity, continuity, and depth.
In pursuing genealogical research, it has become very obvious, especially recently, from the apparently massive explosion in the popularity of genealogical research databases/websites like Ancestry, and the LDS’ FamilySearch website, from genetic genealogy sites like Family Tree DNA, GEDMATCH, and 23 And Me, and from the increasing number of TV shows about that genealogical research, that many people are trying to find, and to reconnect, the threads of familial ties and memories that have–also as a consequence of the disorienting and disruptive pace of change and family and geographical dispersion in our era–been severely weakened, severed, or forgotten–lost.
What were the names of your ancestors going back generations in time (names that many modified when they came to this country), what were their countries of origin before they arrived in this country, what were their histories, what were their individual trials and accomplishments, and what kind of times did they live in/go through?
We Americans are said by some to be generally weak on History, Geography, and Languages, and current trends in Academia are deliberately enlarging those areas of ignorance.
Then, of course, there may have been the understandable wish of many of our ancestors, newly arrived on our shores, to make a clean break, to want to forget the past and to start afresh and, starting afresh in our new country, they might have had no time for memories, when getting to work on the business of survival and success was so imperative.
Whatever it’s reason, I would argue that many of our losses of our past histories, of our family heritages, of intimate and detailed knowledge of our family histories over past generations, also weakens the social fabric and likely has a negative effect on our individual lives.
As a personal example of this forgetting. when I was a very young child in the 1940s, the custom of my family–-as I understand had, up until then, been the longstanding and fairly widespread custom of many families–was to periodically make a several hour, lazy afternoon drive to the relatively nearby grave sites of some deceased family members from three generations ago in a nearby state, there to tidy up the grave sites, leave flowers, and to honor and remember those ancestors and their lives.
(Only one surviving relative, I later discovered, knew the names of direct ancestors from four generations back, and that Uncle had only a hazy idea of where they might have been buried–the answers to those questions took me several years to find.)
Time moved on, other priorities intervened, family members died or moved far away, the visits became more infrequent and, eventually, stopped altogether.
When, as an adult, I wanted to visit/reconnect to these grave sites, I discovered that no one was left alive who clearly remembered where those grave sites were located, or who had certain knowledge of who was buried in them.
Working from my dim five or six year old memories, a couple of remembered mentions by now deceased relatives, maps, and driving around investigating, I finally did rediscover one–but not all–of those grave sites, but I still have not discovered any real details about the lives and histories of those relatives from just a few generations ago, any pictures of them, about who they were and what they were like, much less even earlier generations of ancestors.
My impression is that this custom of visiting grave sites has been greatly diminished in our now very widely dispersed and much more hectic society.
Would a detailed knowledge of my family’s heritage, of their names, a somewhat detailed knowledge of who those ancestors were, where they came from, what their lives were like and their histories–as well as those of ancestors even further back down the generations–be a stabilizing force, give me some comfort, give me a sense of being more “rooted,” give me, and us, more of a sense of “continuity” and “depth” that would likely be helpful in withstanding the pressures and storms of our times?
I think they would.