U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High

WASHINGTON — Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.html

Majority of U.S. public school students are in povertyFor the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.

The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade in the 2012-2013 school year were eligible for the federal program that provides free and reduced-price lunches. The lunch program is a rough proxy for poverty, but the explosion in the number of needy children in the nation’s public classrooms is a recent phenomenon that has been gaining attention among educators, public officials and researchers.

“We’ve all known this was the trend, that we would get to a majority, but it’s here sooner rather than later,” said Michael A. Rebell of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College at Columbia University, noting that the poverty rate has been increasing even as the economy has improved. “A lot of people at the top are doing much better, but the people at the bottom are not doing better at all."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html

One in 14 Americans will grow up with a parent in prisonMore than 5 million children in the United States have had a parent in prison or jail, according to a 2015 study from the Maryland-based research center Child Trends. That’s 1 in 14 Americans who will grow up losing their parents to prison—and this is most likely an undercount.

The only period in US history comparable to our current era of mass incarceration is the Great Depression.

This is particularly troubling for black children like Erica: One in four African Americans born in 1990 has had a father in prison by the age of 14.
Researchers and specialists have understood for some time that a parent’s incarceration can have a severe impact on a child. But the sheer scale of the problem in America today is unprecedented, as the country’s policy of mass incarceration over the past three decades consigns so many children to devastating problems, ranging from crippling PTSD to homelessness. While criminal justice reform efforts are slowly taking effect, the number of children who have had a parent in prison won’t significantly shrink for years—perhaps not even until a new generation comes of age.

But as the problem of over-incarcerating adults is gaining attention, the despair of their children remains. When it comes to national scale and severity of impact on a child’s life, Wildeman says the only period in US history comparable to our current era of mass incarceration is the Great Depression.

Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young WhitesDrug overdoses are driving up the death rate of young white adults in the United States to levels not seen since the end of the AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago — a turn of fortune that stands in sharp contrast to falling death rates for young blacks, a New York Times analysis of death certificates has found.

The rising death rates for those young white adults, ages 25 to 34, make them the first generation since the Vietnam War years of the mid-1960s to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it.

The Times analyzed nearly 60 million death certificates collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1990 to 2014. It found death rates for non-Hispanic whites either rising or flattening for all the adult age groups under 65 — a trend that was particularly pronounced in women — even as medical advances sharply reduce deaths from traditional killers like heart disease. Death rates for blacks and most Hispanic groups continued to fall.

The analysis shows that the rise in white mortality extends well beyond the 45- to 54-year-old age group documented by a pair of Princeton economists in a research paper that startled policy makers and politicians two months ago.

While the death rate among young whites rose for every age group over the five years before 2014, it rose faster by any measure for the less educated, by 23 percent for those without a high school education, compared with only 4 percent for those with a college degree or more.

The drug overdose numbers were stark. In 2014, the overdose death rate for whites ages 25 to 34 was five times its level in 1999, and the rate for 35- to 44-year-old whites tripled during that period. The numbers cover both illegal and prescription drugs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/science/drug-overdoses-propel-rise-in-mortality-rates-of-young-whites.html

swampman posted:

Suicide is highly desirable and sounds like a great idea, but I think the real problem is with the Puritan work ethic placing so much scorn on procrastination. It's one of those things, like texting your ex or learning how to play MineCraft, that's probably better for you to put off until later. If you are feeling suicidal, go start doing a lot of other things, until you're too busy to even think about killing yourself in the next few months. When I hear about someone killing themselves, I feel embarrassed for them because they never learned how to prioritize.

and prolly couldn't re-calibrate their ambitions to get through saturn returns. those old ambitions and ideals need to die or else they become major baggage, folks

MarianneSadd posted:

MarxUltor posted:

Kinda expected this to be an earth day thread because the title is perfect for it.

I can't really look into environmental issues if I want to remain in the majority for the suicide statistic.

maybe I'll get that one if no one else has by the time I get home and high. Don't think we've had a good Dead Gay Earth porno thread in a while.

karphead posted:

tpot:

there is probably no better summary of Marc maron than him taking 45 seconds to repeat a stolen Nietzsche aphorism to a crowd of astounded dumbasses