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Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

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Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparatively speaking, at least gender-wise, this data should be taken with a grain of salt. Males are historically more effective at killing themselves. This data only looks at ED visits and you don't go to the hospital when you're clearly dead. And if you assume "suicide attempt" is using the technical definition [1], they're only looking at ED visits where the patient did not die. Males aged 15 to 24 were 4x as l…

EDIT: I find it gross that some people always want to take over a discussion about women and make it about men.

Not quite. I'm saying that the Male % and Female % should not be compared as-is.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#92

I witnessed this first hand. My daughter is in this age bracket and our school was 100% remote up until the spring of 2021. The return to school was hybrid, two days a week, and divided 50/50 by alphabet. Her anxiety levels went through the roof. Thankfully we didn't get to an extreme case of suicidal ideation but things were pretty bad for a while. Medication has helped, but getting a therapist appointment is nearly…

> Two of our friends have physically relocated out of the district, two others are going to change schools. how would that even help though? was what you are describing specific to this school then? would moving to another, unfamiliar group of preteen girls just add to anxiety? (in my case, relatively sheltered boys so i don't see much of this... for now, anyway)

The goal is just for time to pass in the least unpleasant way possible, so moving to a fresh group would buy some time before the same problems become unbearable again.

Pretty much the same reason we change jobs.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#93
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That definitely looks like an impactful year from the graphs there. I think if I had kids I wouldn’t let them on such sites until 16/17 or never. Granted, I have a strong opinion against social media before this data.

How would you handle it if they begged, pleaded, and explained how all their friends use it and it'd be social ostracism to not use it? I'm not a parent yet but I dread this situation. I'm good at denying urges personally, so I'd tell them desire is a constant part of life, we can't always get what we crave. Further, I'd state actual facts about girls mental health, they will see and be exposed to unhealthy mindsets…

This is totally anecdotal but I have 3 teenagers and I think the most important thing is keeping up with what's going on in their lives and taking an active interest in making sure they are emotionally equipped to deal with the problems that come up.

Teens are just people with very little experience dealing with their seemingly huge amounts of emotion so parents should help them process. We can't protect them from everything so trying to just hide the bad stuff is not going to work, folks will grow up without the tools to deal with it when things go wrong.

Keeping up with what's going on and jumping in when they get stuck, either because the situation is overwhelming, they don't have the proper tools, or they're just putting too much weight on their shoulders, is super valuable.

Unfortunately, with all of the pressures of daily life, combined with the struggles of folks in lower socio-economic environments, lots of people do not have enough time or surplus emotional budget to give it the proper attention, they're just trying to survive.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#94
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparatively speaking, at least gender-wise, this data should be taken with a grain of salt. Males are historically more effective at killing themselves. This data only looks at ED visits and you don't go to the hospital when you're clearly dead. And if you assume "suicide attempt" is using the technical definition [1], they're only looking at ED visits where the patient did not die. Males aged 15 to 24 were 4x as l…

Yet did the successful suicide rate in males increase to compensate? It seems like you have a duty, out of politeness, to at least address whether you attempted to address this. Bringing up makes suicide rates vs female without trying to address if that explains a 50v3% increase in attempts isn’t very helpful, or interesting.

Maybe instead of complaining, you can look it up yourself and contribute the data to this thread.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#96
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you handle it if they begged, pleaded, and explained how all their friends use it and it'd be social ostracism to not use it? I'm not a parent yet but I dread this situation. I'm good at denying urges personally, so I'd tell them desire is a constant part of life, we can't always get what we crave. Further, I'd state actual facts about girls mental health, they will see and be exposed to unhealthy mindsets…

From what I hear from everyone I know with kids... >How would you handle it if they bought their own 2nd cellphone, and only used the cellular network to escape your control. That's what really happens. Lock your kid down? They'll get right around it by going outside of the infrastructure and devices you supply. They'll just carry two phones around, and you just won't be wiser about the second one unless you catch th…

The lock on my front door could probably be picked, but I still use it. Raising the effort required to do something can have a perfectly good ROI without being perfect. Same goes with reasoning and any other approach you might try to take (preferably in conjunction)

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#97
post #4

"We found the correlation to be very strong, which is the highest category statistically possible" What?

Not exactly an n-sigma statement with the result of double blind, or look elsewhere...

Disappointingly that does read a little close to "I found what I was looking for so stopped looking" which makes me want to grab the author and interrogate them over zoom into they hang up.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#98
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram was founded in 2010.

That definitely looks like an impactful year from the graphs there. I think if I had kids I wouldn’t let them on such sites until 16/17 or never. Granted, I have a strong opinion against social media before this data.

This is the wrong approach.

You must realize that every generation of youth from here on will face some unique challenges of their own, and the only way to overcome them is to help them tackle it head on and not let them become defeated by it. Attempting to time travel back to some simpler time is not an option. The simpler time is gone, and will never return. This is their life now.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#99
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram was founded in 2010.

I am not disagreeing but I am interested to know which specific factors make it so different from things in the past. I remember growing up and the boogeyman was sexualized videos on MTV and violent video games. I didn’t believe it then and I don’t quite believe it now. Not to say I don’t believe social media has negative impacts but this is a pretty sharp rise. It also coincided with the post-2009 financial crisis.…

> I remember growing up and the boogeyman was sexualized videos on MTV and violent video games

Ironically, I think that generation may have been more or less right about the imagery being a negative, but wrong about the mechanism by which it works on us negatively.

Sexualized imagery does not turn boys into rapists. But it does seem to promote body image insecurity, social status worries, and general anxiety, in those who see it, particularly those of the same sex, and where the person is seen as desirable to emulate. Violence in the media, also, probably doesn't make us violent. But it may well skew how accurately we estimate the likelihood of interpersonal violence. Quite a few studies hint at a link between how terrified someone is of being murdered and how much gory TV they watch, basically.

t;ldr: instead of turning us into sex-crazed impulsives like feared, it turned us into sex-hating neurotics.

Re: Schools opened, suicide attempts in girls skyrocketed

#100
post #95

Did they attempt to take the analysis back in time to use the larger dataset of schools being closed. I.e. Has teen suicide in America always been higher when schools were open always, or is this somehow unique to the extra closures?

> That’s not unexpected. Suicide death rates (for which we have decades of reliable data) among teens and young adults predictably fall during summer months, and also in December—that is, times when schools are the least in session. So, what our graphs above show, an apparent inverse correlation between school closings and suicidal behavior, is not unique to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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