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posted by on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:03PM   Printer-friendly

Rural America is facing an existential crisis. As cities continue to grow and prosper, small towns are shrinking. That fundamental divide played itself out in the recent presidential election.

[...] The trend is clear: Rural America is literally fading away. It shouldn't come as a surprise, therefore, that the opioid overdose epidemic has hit rural states, like Kentucky and West Virginia, especially hard. And the latest research from the CDC also shouldn't come as a surprise: Suicides in rural America (labeled as non-core) have increased over 40% in 16 years.

From 1999 to 2015, suicide rates increased everywhere in America. On average, across the U.S., suicides increased from 12.2 per 100,000 to 15.7 per 100,0001, an increase of just under 30%. However, in rural America, the suicide rate surged over 40%2, from just over 15 per 100,000 to roughly 22 per 100,000. Similarly, the suicide rate in micropolitan areas (defined as having a population between 10,000-49,999) went from 14 per 100,000 to 19 per 100,000, an increase of around 35%.

On the flip side, major cities saw much smaller increases in suicide rates, on the order of 10%. The graph depicts a clear pattern: Suicide rates are highest in the most rural parts of the country, and they slowly decrease as urbanization increases. As of 2015, the suicide rate in rural areas (22 per 100,000) is about 40% higher than in the nation as a whole (15.7 per 100,000) and 83% higher than in large cities (12 per 100,000).

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:25PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:25PM (#486567)

    You would conclude WRONG.

    Their suicide rate IS higher than the general population; that's a simple logical and mathematical fact:

    http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/806779-overview#a1 [medscape.com]

    The reasons behind that are a *separate* issue.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:29PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:29PM (#486573) Journal

    Okay, thank you!

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by slinches on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:11PM (3 children)

    by slinches (5049) on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:11PM (#486599)

    I'm guessing a big reason is that on top of knowing how, they see first hand what the quality of life is like for terminally ill patients and choose to avoid the worst parts when they get to that point.

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday March 30 2017, @09:48PM (2 children)

      by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday March 30 2017, @09:48PM (#486765) Journal

      I'm guessing a big reason is that on top of knowing how, they see first hand what the quality of life is like for terminally ill patients and choose to avoid the worst parts when they get to that point.

      The link that was posted above actually seems to indicate that physicians may be *less likely* to attempt suicide than the general public. So I think the reasons aren't likely to be specific to their profession, it's probably the same BS that everyone deals with. The difference is that physicians, due to their particular expertise, are more likely to *succeed*.

      From the link:

      Because of their greater knowledge of and better access to lethal means, physicians have a far higher suicide completion rate than the general public. The most reliable estimates of successful completion of suicide range from 1.4-2.3 times the rate achieved in the general population. Although female physicians attempt suicide far less often than their counterparts in the general population, their completion rate equals that of male physicians and, thus, far exceeds that of the general population (2.5-4 times the rate by some estimates).

      • (Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday March 30 2017, @11:48PM (1 child)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Thursday March 30 2017, @11:48PM (#486825) Homepage

        Still, it's a stressful fucking job with long hours but with soaring malpractice rates, huge student loan debt, and brutal schedules which allow little free time and energy to enjoy the money they do get to keep.

        Fun fact: It's called "residency" because residents actually used to live in the fucking hospitals. Let that sink in a moment.

        I'm no medical doctor, but if by some miracle I became one, I would definitely feel nothing but hopelessness and regret for all that lost time and money (both from med school as well as my "career") as well as the constant stress and witnessing everything that can go wrong with humanity that I've doomed my life to -- and would likely become one of those rogue doctors who switches patients' charts and medications and pisses in the IV bags and on comatose patients, perhaps slipping RU-486 into the drinks of unemployed Mexican women pregnant with their ninth kid.

        Being a trauma surgeon wouldn't be that bad. When Pedro or Tyrone festooned with gang tattoos comes in via gurney for the third time riddled with bullet-wounds and expects to be fixed on the taxpayers' dime (again) we'd have a lot of leeway letting the bastard bleed to death or amputating their genetalia.

        Medical personnel generally have a sense of gallows humor given all the suffering they have to deal with on a regular basis -- they do have some cool stories, though, like a male patient in cowboy attire coming into the ER wearing panties underneath and with a various objects stuck in his rectum.

        • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday March 31 2017, @04:45PM

          by urza9814 (3954) on Friday March 31 2017, @04:45PM (#487161) Journal
          Still, it's a stressful fucking job with long hours but with soaring malpractice rates, huge student loan debt, and brutal schedules which allow little free time and energy to enjoy the money they do get to keep.

          Oh absolutely, I'm not arguing that it isn't, just pointing out that the evidence provided doesn't actually show that it's any worse than anything else. Although I suppose you could maybe make some argument that other people who try and fail might not have ACTUALLY wanted to, and a doctor might not make a half-hearted attempt since they damn well know if it's gonna work or not. So maybe they are actually more likely to make a *serious* attempt, but that's gonna be impossible to measure with any amount of accuracy. And really any attempt is still a fuckin problem.

          And I gotta say that my mother is a nurse -- formerly ICU, now float -- which kinda reduces my sympathy for the "poor doctors" who get paid an order of magnitude more while the nurses do the literal heavy lifting and keep the place running all day long. Although that's gotten significantly better since she got that place unionized...or it WAS anyway, now she's just trying to retire before management strips away all their benefits again. Just the nurses though of course; can't risk doctors or management not being able to buy their new Mercedes every year!

          Medical personnel generally have a sense of gallows humor given all the suffering they have to deal with on a regular basis -- they do have some cool stories, though, like a male patient in cowboy attire coming into the ER wearing panties underneath and with a various objects stuck in his rectum.

          Yeah I know those well! My mother's a nurse, my father a disability attorney, in a fairly small town. So they had a lot of the same clients/patients and ended up working with a lot of the same people. Patients, doctors, community assistance programs...I'd get stories about all of 'em from multiple angles!