[HN Gopher] Suicide trends in the early months of the Covid-19 p...
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Suicide trends in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic
Author : DanBC
Score : 38 points
Date : 2021-04-13 20:44 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thelancet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thelancet.com)
| kulix425 wrote:
| doubt
| argvargc wrote:
| In "The Lancet"?
|
| You mean the same Lancet that published an anti-HCQ study, pushed
| all over mainstream media, that it was later forced to
| (comparatively quietly) retract, after the papers authors refused
| to provide would-be peer-review any access to the data?
|
| _next_
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I apologize if this is dark. Could it be that the change-up in
| our routines and the world in general has made some suicidal
| people reconsider? We live in very interesting times.. I have
| never been close to considering suicide, but I imagine I would at
| least have wanted to find out what happens next now that there's
| a global pandemic.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| My guess is, it's because in the beginning of the pandemic many
| people started reconnecting with people they hadn't talked to
| in a long time, and some suicidal people found sympathetic
| ears.
|
| Fascinatingly, social media and messenger apps probably have
| data to back my guess, "Of people that interacted with each
| other, give me the time interval since their last interaction",
| and my guess is, the average of that interval would've
| increased in March/April 2020.
| standardUser wrote:
| That take isn't unintuitive, but I think it discounts the
| degree to which suicidal thoughts are the product of mental
| illness. It's not that a suicidal person needs a reason to
| live, or a logical argument to change their mind. In most cases
| (some estimates say 90%) the individual needs treatment for a
| specific mental illness.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Seems like a good study. Interesting result, I wonder if it will
| hold true for later periods, once the novelty has worn off...
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Should HN automatically post the suicide prevention lines on
| posts that mention suicide and have a certain number of votes? I
| feel like it should.
| OldManAndTheCpp wrote:
| Does that have any effect on reducing suicide rates?
| ketamine__ wrote:
| In this climate if it saves just one life it's worth it.
| Kinrany wrote:
| In what climate wouldn't it be?
|
| But we don't know if it does. It sounds like a kind of
| thing that does almost nothing on its own and becomes
| irrelevant the moment a halfway decent solution is found.
| vmception wrote:
| Why do you feel that way? I don't have any context on your
| worldview and don't really understand that meme. What does
| suicide prevention copypasta actually do, what does it hope to
| accomplish, is there any quantitative study on the efficacy,
| and do people even want data as opposed to a feeling?
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| It was a spontaneous thought that came to mind when I saw
| this post. I am not aware of any such research but know that
| search engines do it automatically and people do on Reddit
| posts that are related to this topic.
| carabiner wrote:
| Please don't. Posting the suicide hotlines does not make you a
| hero.
| pizza wrote:
| imo no, it's a trite gesture that I can't help but feel is
| robotic and lacking in human warmth..
| RileyJames wrote:
| I'm surprised the numbers between NSW & QLD are similar to
| Victoria. As Victoria (Melbourne specifically, but that
| represents the majority of the population) had a long, harsh
| lockdown, where as QLD & NSW did not.
|
| Maybe looking at suicides within specific populations would be
| more telling. I imagine for many, working from home was an
| opportunity. For others, it meant unemployment.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well, it all depends on the exact mechanisms for how "I'm
| depressed" gets all the way to suicide. No question that the
| lockdown was depressing for a lot of people, but there's all
| kinds of reasons it might not (in the early months) have led to
| an increase in suicides, including:
|
| - a feeling that it wasn't just you, lots of people felt this
| way
|
| - a feeling that an end was in sight, unlike if you think
| you've just screwed up your life somehow
|
| - an understanding that the way you were feeling was not your
| fault, and had an external cause, rather than being about your
| worth or etc.
|
| Not saying any of these theories (guesses) are right, just
| suggesting there are lots of possibilities which would need to
| be examined to really understand what went on (and didn't)
| during a lockdown.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| While it's kind of a non-event, and given that it's only the
| early months of the pandemic maybe not even a particularly
| surprising non-event, I think it is important that even studies
| which don't find anything noteworthy get published. So, while I
| still have serious concerns about the long-term mental health
| impacts of the pandemic (for several reasons), I do think it's
| good that this got published.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Why do you say that this is not noteworthy?
|
| They found there was no significant increase in suicide in any
| of the 35 regions they studied, and in fact found a
| statistically significant decrease in suicide in 12 of them.
| Given that many people were concerned there might be an
| increase in suicides due to pandemic lockdowns, particularly in
| the early months when restrictions were most severe, this seems
| like a very noteworthy result.
| idownvoted wrote:
| People who rejoice about this study because they want to use
| it to defend policies that are criticized for potential
| negative mental health impacts willingly neglect the nature
| of suicide: Of course sucide numbers go down because many
| suicidal people want their death to be noticed.
|
| Say the policies are lifted and suicides go up again, will
| the rejoicing ones account for that as well? Of course not,
| they will rather gaslight the argument by blaming the
| increase on the lifting
| [deleted]
| redis_mlc wrote:
| A whole class of business people was wiped out financially in
| the US. When the commercial real estate lawsuits start, we'll
| see what happens.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know how many times on HN I've seen comments
| like "we need to open things up because suicides are up due
| to shutdowns!" without any supporting data. And now we see
| suicides were actually down in some places and mostly
| unchanged everywhere else.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The data doesn't show that lockdowns didn't cause suicide,
| either though. For example, Norway is in the dataset, and
| Norway didn't lock down, or only locked down for a couple
| weeks. It might also be interesting to see what the results
| were in urban areas with tight restrictions, maybe even in
| countries with already high suicide rates, like South Korea
| and Japan, to see the results. But either way, you cannot
| isolate the "lockdown" variable because there was a full
| spectrum of policy responses from different countries,
| cities, and subregions. So, let's just say the jury is
| still out.
|
| We know that social isolation causes depression. We know
| that economic hardship causes depression. When people argue
| against lockdowns, this is why.
| hobs wrote:
| We had more lockdowns, we didnt have more suicides, how
| is that not showing the claim doesnt hold?
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| But this was just for the first three months, and for those
| regions... I'm not for hasty reopenings, rather for more
| money for mental health, and intuition says the loss of
| jobs and financial security must have an effect on mental
| health, and unfortunately along with that, suicides.
|
| E.g. in India: https://www.latimes.com/world-
| nation/story/2020-10-06/suicid...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| There are hundreds of stories like this one by NPR, which
| not an expected source for anti-lockdown fake news:
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2021/02/02/9620601...
|
| So people read it and think the suicide rate is going up.
| It may actually be going up for some groups in some places,
| but the bigger message here is that the media loves a good
| horror story, and is willing to report anything based on
| anecdotes.
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