JAMA claims that suicide actually declined last year; deaths from overdoses etc. were up by 20,000. Reason reports; link to the JAMA study is there if you want the raw study.
JAMA claims that suicide actually declined last year; deaths from overdoses etc. were up by 20,000. Reason reports; link to the JAMA study is there if you want the raw study.
3 comments:
I admit I am surprised that suicides are not only not up, but down a little. I still think "delayed suicide," of people whose businesses failed or took a hit, or marriages deteriorated, or medical effects of the illness bring some to suicide in the next few years, but that's an iffy category. Can't measure it very well, but people at my old hospital taking histories might see it emerge as a theme.
That deaths of despair increased seems intuitively correct to me, so that is not surprising. It is going to take a long while to sort it out, however, because of slightly different reporting practices among states. Massachusetts excess deaths are much closer to the Covid total than the rest of the country, suggesting that they are not covering up any Covid to make their hospital (or governor) look good. Tennessee is the opposite. Sumbody maybe covering sumpin' there.
How many overdoses are intentional, or something close to it, but get listed as accidental? That's a major factor in trying to impute meaning into these stats, and a difficult question to answer.
Another thought- with people home, many who considered suicide may not have been alone long enough to carry it out, but may soon find a window of opportunity as people go back out of the house for longer times...
I think you also need to look at state and lower level numbers. I don't expect Florida will have similar results as California, for instance.
Post a Comment