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Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

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Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#241

Post by it_does_follow »

throwawayyear22 wrote: post #103
blooalien wrote: post #68

Of course nothing that happened before the pandemic could have contributed at all to any feelings of hopelessness. The absolute despair required to want to "end it all" just suddenly happened because of this one situation. The constant 24/7 barrage of "doom and gloom" and just general insanity in the news and "social" media couldn't have laid any groundwork for anyone to feel like there's just no point in even trying…

In regards to the media, parents could be more dismissive of the doom and gloom. Instead I watch parents repeat in front of their children that corporations are evil, sea level will rise by 10's of feet soon, racism everywhere, reverse racism everywhere, the China Communists will take over the world, that the U.S. doesn't manufacture anything, etc. I recall one adult in my entire childhood that laughed off a doom and…

The idea that if people would stop talking how the world is so bad the world wouldn't be so bad is one of the strangest patterns of thinking I've seen pop up here more recently.

The world is in a state of decline, climate change being just one of many stressors on society. Pretending this is not the case doesn't make it go away, and if anything the media is aggressively downplaying the current situation we are in.

Anxiety and despair don't have to be the only reactions to decline, but we certainly won't get past those as long as people keep pretending everything is fine.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#242

Post by pdimitar »

ShockedUnicorn wrote: post #239
pdimitar wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Multiple people have pointed out errors in your thinking, but I'm gonna add something slightly different: Consider that we know that mentioning suicide in the news increases the number of suicides. There is therefore a minor Info Hazard to mention suicides without the correct help structure in place. You are by that original comment implying that medication is ineffective or a crutch. There are multiple other comment…

Okay. And I was saying that people get addicted to crutches as well.

It's a risk. I'm not stigmatizing people for needing help and never will.

I can accept that my original comment came off a little bit more extremist than I intended but it's IMO also true that you all are projecting a little bit too much, and made me look like a monster who tell legitimately struggling people to suck it off.

I don't accept this. I didn't even imply it.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#244

Post by it_does_follow »

throwawayboise wrote: post #40
rhizome wrote: post #22

I think one thing that will make the history books is how little innovation or adaptation there was in educational technology, rendering a truly depressing set of prospects for learning over the pandemic. A lot of companies have made a LOT of money in edutech going back to the 90s CDROM days and what do students get when the system escapes these companies's grasp and students need some real imagination put to the mat…

What were they supposed to do? They had about two weeks to go from fully in-classroom to fully-remote with no warning, in the middle of the school year. I don't care what kind of technology you have, that is going to be a clusterfuck.

> no warning

We're in the third year of a global pandemic and nothing that is happening now is something that wasn't predicted as a serious possibility.

Pretending everything is fine doesn't make it fine. Acknowledging the situation we're in, and having plan for "rapidly spreading variant that starts impacting kids more" is something that would be an obvious thing for schools to do.

We concretely knew in November this was coming. Again, many people tried to pretend this wasn't happening and brush it off, but there was plenty of time to foresee this situation and plan for it.

The vast majority of people, on all sides of the political spectrum, have aggressively been trying not to see what is happening in front of their eyes. To try to force things to be "normal". If we accepted that we're in a pandemic, and that sometimes we'll have to change our life a bit, we could have easily prepared for this case.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#245

Post by pdimitar »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #215
pdimitar wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where did I say that everyone is like this? Christ, people. You aren't necessary everywhere with your "actually" stuff. Chill. I'm sharing what I observe and what I find disturbing. You can just ignore it.

> I'll join the chorus of the other sibling commenters here by expressing skepticism that any medication will at all help with anything. “at all help with anything” sounds pretty absolute to my ears, as does the wording in basically every other sentence in what you said, but I’m glad to be mistaken. Though I note the person you responded to barely mentioned medication, and you seemed to find it necessary to denounce…

Let me quote myself:

> * Psychiatric medication often simply numbs your brain...*

Notice the word "often". I'm not a 10-year old that claims that the 4-5 cases that I've witnessed represent the entire world and I'm getting tired of everybody here pretending that I'm some kind of monster.

Or maybe you're projecting too much?

Get off my back already. Read more slowly, don't get outraged, don't assume malice. Does wonders both to mental health and to the quality of online discussions.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#247

Post by ramblerman »

rtpg wrote: post #224
pdimitar wrote: post #102

I'll join the chorus of the other sibling commenters here by expressing skepticism that any medication will at all help with anything. Psychiatric medication often simply numbs your brain so it stops being worried about things that legitimately and truly torment it. It reduces your sensitivity, it knocks off your normal brain chemicals balance, and it turns you into a robot. I've had a family member go through this a…

You can't claim to be pro-science and then false-ly claim that psychiatric medication does nothing. Depression and ADHD are _extremely_ treatable through medication, just as examples. There are many studies around this topic, it is way more treatable than certain physical conditions. "Knocks off your normal brain chemicals" have you considered that some people's normal brain chemicals are not set up normally? Would y…

What a farce to reduce any criticism of psychiatry to being anti-science. OP didn't even mention ADHD.

Depression is pretty wide and not fully understood. You can't just take the meaning of life and reduce it to a scientific problem. Yet that's what most of these kids are struggling with.

It's hopeful that the field of psychiatry is also experimenting with psycobylin as that at least will allow for people to come to some meaning on their own, in a journey rather than being numbed out.

Also what does anti-scientific even mean in this context? You can run a well set up experiment that turns people into vegetables and drastically sees a drop in suicide. Is it therefore correct? Don't forget this field is only 40 years away from lobotomies.

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#248

Post by [deleted] »

pdimitar wrote: post #223
evocatus wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More pontification and intellectualization of matters that people have no first-hand experience of, as is HN's wont. As someone with over 20 years of mental health issues who refused medication for exactly the same reasons - "sucking it up," trying to address root causes, meditation, spirituality, exercise... ... none of it worked. You could easily spend a lifetime trying to "root cause" the source of your malady and…

Quoted post unavailable.

[deleted]

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#249

Post by honkycat »

cabalamat wrote: post #212
honkycat wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Medication CAN lead to a much better quality of life for many people. Yes, it can. But if the underlying issue is that society and social structures are fucked up, and that's what's making people depressed, then a proper cure has to involve fixing society.

> then a proper cure has to involve fixing society

Where did I say that society is perfect, and that the only thing making people depressed is chemical imbalance?

I agree that our current society can be stressful, and that environmental factors[0] also affect people's behavior.

I agree that we can improve society through collective action, and hopefully that would lead to better quality of life for people, thus reducing the rate of youth suicide attempts.

However, I was addressing to OP's suggestion that medication will not "help at all with anything." Also that "Psychiatric medication often simply numbs your brain ... and it turns you into a robot."

So what are you defending here, exactly? Do you agree with OP? Is that why you are trying to attribute something to me I didn't say to make my argument seem absurd, instead of addressing my actual arguments?

0: Such as climate change, peak oil, the destruction of our natural ecosystem, the massive die-off of earth's biodiversity, and posturing from progressively more desperate super-powers

Re: Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

#250

Post by whatshisface »

The medication debate, on this forum of smart and reasonable people, comes out as one side yelling 1+1=2 at a crowd who's yelling back that 2+2=4.

Yes, staying on strong mood-neutralizing antidepressants forever isn't a full life and it's probably bad for your liver. Yes, when you are laying in bed and can't do anything, those external factors that are making you hate your life will get worse until something, including a chemical that's bad for your kidneys, gets you up and walking. They are both true at the same time.

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