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posted by janrinok on Friday June 08 2018, @07:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the reports-of-my-death-are-not-exaggerated dept.

The U.S. Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (CDC) released a new Vital Signs report on Thursday, 7 June, 2018.

In the press release about the new report, the CDC states that:

Suicide rates have been rising in nearly every state, according to the latest Vital Signs report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2016, nearly 45,000 Americans age 10 or older died by suicide. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death and is one of just three leading causes that are on the rise.
[...]
Researchers found that more than half of people who died by suicide did not have a known diagnosed mental health condition at the time of death. Relationship problems or loss, substance misuse; physical health problems; and job, money, legal or housing stress often contributed to risk for suicide. Firearms were the most common method of suicide used by those with and without a known diagnosed mental health condition.

Are any Soylentils contemplating suicide? Do you know anyone who has attempted or succeeded in taking their own life? Why do you think suicide rates are on the rise?


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Friday June 08 2018, @11:54PM (3 children)

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Friday June 08 2018, @11:54PM (#690598) Journal

    Anyone here actually experience depression? It's an odd thing. You have this, fog in your mind that you cant seem to push past. Every task becomes a mountain and your energy and zeal drain from you like a stopper in your foot was unplugged. Then comes the heaviness, the relentless heaviness which is that lack of energy. Ugh. Bordem sets in so you quickly go for an escape: cigarette, booze, drugs, TV, video games, all of the above, etc. Mindless crap to distract you. You feel a little better but not much because it will just come back. It always does. Then add in anxiety and ADD.

    But then there are those heavy waves. I'm talking laying on the floor motionless for hours in the dark because you feel so drained of will. It's so bad you wind up crying just from the lack of will to move. It's scary and you want it to stop. Sometimes drugs work. Sometimes you just want to go to sleep and not wake up...

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by pdfernhout on Saturday June 09 2018, @02:23AM (1 child)

    by pdfernhout (5984) on Saturday June 09 2018, @02:23AM (#690643) Homepage

    See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16922738 [ycombinator.com]

    A key excerpt from a comment I made on an earlier discussion of "The Depression Thing":
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15455259 [ycombinator.com]
    =====
    Or see an essay by Philip Hickey, Ph.D called: "Depression Is Not An Illness: It is an Adaptive Mechanism"; quoting from that:
            "In order to feel good, the following eight factors must be present in our lives.
          * good nutrition
          * fresh air
          * sunshine (in moderation)
          * physical activity
          * purposeful activity with regular experiences of success
          * good relationships
          * adequate and regular sleep
          * ability to avoid destructive social entanglements, while remaining receptive to positive encounters"
    [And when any one or more of those factors are missing -- it can lead to depression, with the likelihood increasing if multiple factors are missing.]
    Also, check out: "The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time Paperback" by Alex Korb PhD.
    ====

    An elderly friend in her 80s had this on her refrigerator: "Life must be made worth living".
    For someone who is too depressed to go with that, one could mediate on: "Life could be made worth living."
    And a lesser step than that is just to be willing to ask, "Could life be made worth living?"

    Good nutrition generally includes a wide variety of whole foods including enough omega 3s and a wide variety of colorful phytonutrients from plants, vitamin D from sunlight and supplements, and so on -- while avoiding refined sugar, refined grains, and most artificial food additives.
    https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Foods-Diet-Lifesaving-Longevity/dp/1478944919 [amazon.com]

    Studies show better nutrition can make a big difference in mood and behavior.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime [theguardian.com]
    "We are suffering, he believes, from widespread diseases of deficiency. Just as vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, deficiency in the essential fats the brain needs and the nutrients needed to metabolise those fats is causing of a host of mental problems from depression to aggression. Not all experts agree, but if he is right, the consequences are as serious as they could be. The pandemic of violence in western societies may be related to what we eat or fail to eat. Junk food may not only be making us sick, but mad and bad too"

    And anecdotally:
    http://fatsickandnearlydead.com/ [fatsickandnearlydead.com]
    http://www.fatsickandnearlydead2.com/ [fatsickandnearlydead2.com]

    Related, not directly about depression, but an example of a hands-on daily food intervention reducing health emergencies:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/02/study-suggests-home-delivered-meals-might-reduce-er-visits/?noredirect=on [washingtonpost.com]
    "There's growing evidence that the forces that shape health aren't just access to medicines, doctor's visits or surgeries, but factors such as the neighborhoods people live in, economic security and access to housing or transportation. These social factors that contribute powerfully to people's health have not traditionally been seen as part of the medical system, but they are a growing area of interest for health-insurance companies interested in containing costs. People who lack reliable access to food are responsible for $77.5 billion per year in excess health-care expenditures, according to one analysis. ... People who received medically tailored meals had about 1.5 fewer emergency room visits, on average, over a 19-month period, compared with a similar group that did not receive meals. They were hospitalized about half as often. ..."

    Good luck, Obviously, the biggest challenge for someone who is depressed is to take even that tiniest first step towards something, whether eating better, sleeping better, having pleasant conversations, walking in nature and sunlight, playing enjoyable music, and so on. It could help to have supportive relationships to help you get onto an upward spiral.

    --
    The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @04:09AM (#690670)

      "purposeful activity with regular experiences of success"
      "good relationships"
      "adequate and regular sleep"
      "ability to avoid destructive social entanglements, while remaining receptive to positive encounters"

      Hard in a fucked up society going down the drains, or bluntly, a suicidal society. Specially the "purposeful" one.

      Now I noticed you copy pasted from HN, yeah, they (well, you) are obsessed with nutrituion and drugs, and too many times they have the blind spot about how HN projects/news/people are a big part of where society is going. Y Combinator, Palantir, start up and exit plan, gig economy, post scarcity (solve that for infinite greed)... that kind of crap. Or as JWZ prefers, http://i.imgur.com/32R3qLv.png [imgur.com] (this is what you get when jwz.org is linked at HN).

      BTW, Robin Williams seem to be taken as idol that went mad... instead of someone that, seeing the end in the near future, decides when and how, instead of losing control and "enjoying" the side effects of medical treatment. He was diagnosed from what I read, and he picked his path instead of, being polite, wandering. Weeks ago a 104yo Australian biologist David Goodall travelled to Switzerland for similar reasons: his life, his choice for an end.

      Sorry if you are trying to get the rest of HN to "behave", and not "one of them". Yet it reminds me about that time a documentary about weapon factory and one interview where an operartor was assembling new stock, and of course, justifying the job. At least it wasn't mines (or researching new war chemicals), just ammo.

      Shorter, by another AC https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=25105&page=1&cid=667666 [soylentnews.org] FUCK GET IT ALREADY

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Saturday June 09 2018, @01:43PM

    by acid andy (1683) on Saturday June 09 2018, @01:43PM (#690788) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, I know the feeling. It's odd how the brain can seem to sort of make you forget what intense happiness and motivation really feel like, even for people like us who try to rationalize and introspect. I've often wondered if there's some sort of evolutionary block to stop the brain finding shortcuts to the reward pathways. If you could fully imagine the happiness, you wouldn't ever have to do anything more to get it
    "Waves" is a good description. Sometimes they pass on their own or more often than not you have to try to force your body to do something that would ordinarily be enjoyable, even though every fiber of your being is telling you there is no point. If you can manage it, eventually momentum can build and pleasure can slowly start to seep back. Exercise can help. Sometimes the mountain just seems too steep though.
    As for wanting to sleep and never wake up, I find extreme pessimism can provide a sort of antidote for that. Life keeps popping up everywhere and as humans living in a first world, technologically advanced society, we have hit the evolutionary jackpot. By some metrics we're the most preferable species to be. Countless organisms therefore have it worse than we do. We can't experience non-existence, only existence, so to me that implies death is a very risky roll of the dice that quite possibly has more worse outcomes than better ones. Better to just sleep it off, if you can. Another thing is if you really hit rock bottom, you have effectively nothing to lose, so could possibly try something different that would otherwise have been dismissed as too risky.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?