article/quiz: suicide statistics

[tofu]

Please read the following article, about suicide statistics from 2004:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/06/health/main3239837.shtml
The suicide rate among preteen and young teen girls spiked 76 percent, a disturbing sign that federal health officials say they can't fully explain.


And tell me if you anything about that article jumps out at you. Let's just say I'm doing a little informal, unscientific survey.

thanks.

[Delvo]

Suicides among girls are treated as a crisis, while suicides among boys, which easily outnumber them, are barely noted in passing to even exist at all in this article, because they're not seriously thought to matter or be an issue. And they're not mentioned at all in another article I saw today on the same subject. It's one of the many ways in which our society is sexist against males and tends to treat them as absolutely worthless.

And the article changed its numbers; they first gave a set of numbers that were well under 100 and then switched to several thousand.

[Ronald Brak]

Whoa, I just looked at some of the comments on that article. No wonder people are killing themselves.

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

As cold-heated as it may seem, could we say suicide is Darwin's way of removing certain genes?

And Delvo, I agree with your point but statistics say more females attempt suicide while 5 times more males actually succeed suicide. This is because females generally go with softer options such as drug overdose while males usually go with guns/knives.

When attacking the feminist driven society we are living in its good to, unlike them, use correct data and unbiased conclusions. Otherwise we will have contradictions and misinterpretations just like them.

[Ronald Brak]

As cold-heated as it may seem, could we say suicide is Darwin's way of removing certain genes?

No, we really couldn't. Although comparing suicide rates between countries and times is problematical, it is fairly obvious that suicide rates vary between different cultures and across time in a way that can't really be explained by genetic differences.

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

OK, fair enough. I realize its a sensitive issue to begin with.

[Paul Beardsley]

As cold-heated as it may seem, could we say suicide is Darwin's way of removing certain genes?
I agree with Ronald Brak here. Natural selection is a heartless mechanism, but I don't think suicide is a manifestation of it. Nevertheless, I think the question is a reasonable one.

Throughout the 90s and the beginning of this century, misandry was rife in the UK media, particularly in adverts. Whatever the product being advertised might have been, we were getting the same message, powerfully expressed: men are useless, a waste of resources, ineffective at best. I remember one particular advert which featured a group of shrieking harridans getting drunk. One woman said something like, "I managed to get rid of some excess fat." Another said, "You dumped him then?" To howls of laughter. I remember thinking, imagine if this advert got made with the gender roles reversed?

So it's probably a given that boys - at least the ones who are susceptible to this kind of negative message - lack a sense of self-worth.

And in reply to the OP, yes, I spotted (or rather guessed in advance) that the gender aspect would be the issue.

[Moose]

Man, the statistics in that article couldn't have been more poorly reported had the "journalist" left them out entirely. Actually, I think the article would have been better off.

"X many people committed suicide in 2004" "100X many people committed suicide in 2004." Uh, where? A little context would be nice.

It should also be noted that a spike is not (necessarily) the same thing as a reversal of a trend. Was there a corresponding increase in 2005? 2006?

What worthless reporting that was.

[tofu]

good job delvo! You're correct. The point that I wanted to make is that this is an article that makes a big deal about girls, when the truth (that the article doesn't tell you) is that five times more boys in that age group commit suicide.

Here's the NCHS report containing raw statistics:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad372.pdf

From the report (page 230), the death rate among girls age 15-24 due to suicide was 3.0 in 2003 and 3.6 in 2004. The death rate among boys age 15-24 due to suicide was 16.0 in 2003 and 16.8 in 2004.

So, not only do five times as many boys as girls in that age group commit suicide each year, but the increase was actually greater for boys than for girls. But who cares?

This article is so ridiculous, and I actually didn't think anyone was going to get it - I'm impressed that someone did. My hint, in case nobody got it was going to be: imagine a town where 10 people are killed in traffic accidents and two people are struck by lightning. The following year, 14 people are killed in traffic accidents and three people are struck by lighting. My goodness! We have a lighting-strike crisis here! Clearly, we need to devote federal tax dollars to study the lighting strike problem and we need programs in our schools to educate the public about the dangers of lighting. Researchers, when asked about this significant, 50% spike in the number of lighting-strike deaths, were unable to point to a specific cause. Just what are we doing wrong as a society that would cause such a marked increase in the number of deaths due to lighting?

[Paracelsus]

The stats didn't jump out at me, particularly, but this detail was rather disturbing, I thought:

The study also documented a change in suicide method. In 1990, guns accounted for more than half of all suicides among young females. By 2004, though, death by hanging and suffocation became the most common suicide method. It accounted for about 71 percent of all suicides in girls aged 10-14; about half of those aged 15-19; and 34 percent between 20-24.

Suffocation and hanging (at least, the 'non-professional' hangings) are nasty, slow ways to die, as opposed to a bullet to the brain, which knocks you out at least, even if it doesn't kill you right away or at all. I would have thought that most girls would choose an overdose of sedatives or something similar.

Very gruesome--and disturbing. :(

[Ronald Brak]

I have noticed that we live in a sexist society, for example it was only 35 years ago that men of a certain age in my country could be conscripted to fight and die in a land war in Asia or other places, but I can't help but notice that sexism tends to run both ways and, depending on how you look at it, women appear to actually have the rough end of the pineapple. While males tend to die more in periods of war, females often have high death rates also, depending on the nature of the conflict. Women are also more likely to be raped and be victims of domestic assault and hold fewer positions of power, both in politics and business. Fortunately in my country women and men now have equal access to education and many more women now hold positions of political and economic power than a generation ago.

[Maksutov]

As cold-heated as it may seem,...Does that have anything to do with fusion?