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from the 1-(800)-273-8255-National-Suicide-Prevention-Lifeline dept.
Experts and laymen have long assumed that people who died by suicide will ultimately do it even if temporarily deterred. Now Celia Watson Seupel reports at the NYT that a growing body of evidence challenges this view with many experts calling for a reconsideration of suicide-prevention strategies stressing “means restriction.” Instead of treating individual risk, means restriction entails modifying the environment by removing the means by which people usually die by suicide. The world cannot be made suicide-proof, of course. But, these researchers argue, if the walkway over a bridge is fenced off, a struggling college freshman cannot throw herself over the side. If parents leave guns in a locked safe, a teenage son cannot shoot himself if he suddenly decides life is hopeless.
Reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries (PDF). According to Cathy Barber, people trying to die by suicide tend to choose not the most effective method, but the one most at hand. Some methods have a case fatality rate as low as 1 or 2 percent,” says Barber. “With a gun, it’s closer to 85 or 90 percent. So it makes a difference what you’re reaching for in these low-planned or unplanned suicide attempts.” Ken Baldwin, who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985 and lived, told reporters that he knew as soon as he had jumped that he had made a terrible mistake. "From the instant I saw my hand leave the railing, I knew I wanted to live. I was terrified out of my skull." Baldwin was lucky to survive the 220 foot plunge into frigid waters. Ms. Barber tells another story: On a friend’s very first day as an emergency room physician, a patient was wheeled in, a young man who had shot himself in a suicide attempt. “He was begging the doctors to save him,” she says. But they could not.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @05:58AM
That is lying with statistics. Impeding gun ownership in some countries has resulted in a 30% drop in gun related suicides. The overall suicide rate remained the same.
That reminds me of some academic papers indicating that, in dry regions i.e. ones without alcohol, the alcoholism rate drops while tobacco use and drug abuse rises. Why? The underlying issue is not resolved, but it does make for pretty numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @06:26AM
And who knows if the alcohol rate really dropped or if it's that prohibited alcoholic use is more difficult to statististcally track than legal alcoholic use. Drug stats aren't easy to track but when comparing changes in the rate of prohibited drug usage where both the before and after comparisons involve prohibited drug usage and the variable is unrelated such that it shouldn't affect the measurement in changes in such stats then measured changes more strongly suggest real world changes. But comparing prohibited alcoholic use with legal use when alcohilic prohibition itself likely affects your ability to measure alcoholic use is more suspect.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @06:51AM
> Impeding gun ownership in some countries has resulted in a 30% drop in gun related suicides.
> The overall suicide rate remained the same.
"So what have the Australian laws actually done for homicide and suicide rates? Howard cites a study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University finding that the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness."
-- Did gun control work in Australia? [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @09:43AM
Go ahead, pull the other one.
This one [nih.gov]is peer reviewed, unlike the Washington post.
The problem is getting worse even with strong gun controls.
From an actually Aussie source. [lifeline.org.au]
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Thursday March 12 2015, @10:34AM
i read a headline blurb that suicide among 40-65 in the US has gone up 40% in the last 7-8 years...
not surprised, the economic crash-that-wasn't-a-crash has destroyed a lot of lives, and made a lot of misery through no fault of the people effected... *and* they are essentially powerless to reverse their fortunes...
just another unaccounted for 'externality' in unrestrained kapitalist imperialism...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @03:18PM
> This one is peer reviewed, unlike the Washington post.
The study referenced in the wapo article is peer reviewed.
The study you linked to does not say what you think it says. It only looked at suicide rates up to 1998.
In other words that study ended rate when the gun buyback was completed.
> From an actually Aussie source.
I'm sorry what? You know that's not peer reviewed, right?
Raw data without analysis is practically guaranteed to mislead.
If these two 'refutations' are the best the pro-gun types can do, then all you've done is provide justification to distrust your reasoning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @06:10PM
The buried reference was not in fact peer reviewed but self published in it's own institution's journal, then referenced elsewhere in peer reviewed journals. This is a perennial problem and anyone that has a pos-tgrad education knows it.
According to you the fact that a 2003 paper did not use data after 1998 is not a problem.
And analysis without raw data is intended to mislead, just as you have been citing, using, and making.
I am not a "pro-gun type" as you say. Even if I was, that is no reason to thoroughly dismiss someone's reasoning. I believe in rationality, facts, and finding answers instead of accepting what is told to me. You have given away your bigotry. That you stereotype and show prejudicial discrimination against those you perceive to not follow along with an anti-gun narrative (even though that is not even my point, just that suicide rates are shown to be independent of guns) is an ethical and logical reason to question your morality and thought process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @08:09PM
The buried reference was not in fact peer reviewed but self published in it's own institution's journal, then referenced elsewhere in peer reviewed journals. This is a perennial problem and anyone that has a pos-tgrad education knows it.
Your claim is false.
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/12/2/509 [oxfordjournals.org]
"The Review is a refereed journal, published twice a year." [oxfordjournals.org]
According to you the fact that a 2003 paper did not use data after 1998 is not a problem.
Your logic is insipid. It is not a "problem," it is irrelevant to the point you were trying to make.
I am not a "pro-gun type" as you say
Well alrighty then.
You are just a blatant liar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @10:07AM
Jesus Christ just look at the graphs in the cited in cited in cited in paper! Right on page nine [andrewleigh.org] the suicide rates by firearm and non-firearm have an amazingly strong negative correlation.
Did one suicide rate go up when the other went down? Absolutely, but the switch happened right before they started to measure for it. And they stopped measuring in 2006, when the rates started skyrocketing back up. They are asshats of the lowest sort of academic integrity. They don't even deserve to mop the floors of any university.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @02:58PM
> Right on page nine the suicide rates by firearm and non-firearm have an amazingly strong negative correlation.
A correlation that began long before the buyback started. That's not causation.
Meta comment: Did you really think that the authors of the study failed to recognize something in the charts of their own study?
> And they stopped measuring in 2006, when the rates started skyrocketing back up. They are asshats of the lowest sort of academic integrity.
I don't think that a study published in 2010, which means that it was probably started circa 2008 is being dishonest by using data that ended in 2006. My guess is that it was the most current data at the time.
I'm having difficulty finding suicide rate data much past 2006 myself. Since you seem to be aware of it, how about a link to it? It's not going to show that the 2008 economic crash is correlated with a trend reversal in the suicide rate is it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @05:58PM
I did link to it and you called it irrelevant. You are in extreme denial and are willing to break reason for authoritarian gains. The numbers are there, in the original sources, you choose to ignore it and use assumptions instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @08:14PM
> I did link to it and you called it irrelevant.
Oh so you are doing that thing where you reply to a single post of mine multiple times.
Good to know there is only one idiot lying to people in this thread.
What you linked to was ridiculous. It was a PR page on a suicide prevention website.
I mean, WTF dude? That's your standard of evidence, but peer-reviewed academics studies are bullshit.
Are you gewg_troll? Your self-absorbed idiocy really sounds like that loser.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @06:01PM
Causation does not need to be proved. The null hypothesis is that gun control has no causation with suicides. That is easy to prove simply by showing the negative correlation.
Meta comment: Do you really think people are not without agendas and biases?
When the data that is chosen to not be used refutes the claims of the paper and they go ahead and publish it anyway four years into the refutation, yes that is being dishonest.