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Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

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Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if we've known this since January or something... and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging?

>You say that as if we've known this since January or something Yes, who could have possibly known about covid19 in January? [0] >and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that forcing people to stay at home, to socially distance themselves fr…

Come on dude. "Known this" in my sentence was not referring to "the existence of COVID-19" but rather "the fact that we would start seeing more suicides than disease deaths today". The right choice was shutting things down. The only question was how long it needs to keep going, which people were still trying to figure out. Now this event might give them more information that might help them figure it out. If you're reasonable you'll give them a chance to see if they'll take it into account. You know full well much of the rest of the executive didn't show remotely as much competence as the CDC about the disease itself for months despite being repeatedly warned even after the outbreak had already occurred, and now you're lashing out at the CDC for not having predicted when the first side effects would start to occur in some cities within 1 day of when you heard the news? Sheesh.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#12
For an opposite example in Japan the stay-at-home order actually reduced the number of suicides[0]. Maybe mental health treatments being so expensive in the US plays a large role in this and the quarantine is just the trigger.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/japan-suicides...

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#14

Isolation paradox: Isolating will help you be less susceptible to illness. Isolation is known to cause higher levels of loneliness, depression, fear, anxiety and weaker immune system increasing susceptibility to illness.

It's not really a paradox because it's understood. Isolation signals to your body that you are being excluded from your tribe or low on the social ladder, which means your world is now more threatening than it used to be, so you need to use more energy to be hyper-vigilant and responsive to stressors.

Social status alters immune regulation and response to infection in macaques

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6315/1041.full

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one in the CDC or state health departments seem to be taking this into account. They're only optimizing for one variable: number of infected and number of covid19 deaths.

You say that as if we've known this since January or something... and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging?

No, 3+ weeks ago it was obvious that we did “flatten the curve,” healthcare systems would not collapse, NYC would not need 30,000 ventilators, and that is when the stay at home orders should have been lifted. We’re not going to burrow underground until we have a vaccine, so the time is long overdue to start restoring our mental health and economic well being. Those at high risk can isolate further, but the general population has delivered what was asked of it.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#17

At what point are more people killing themselves than are getting saved by quarantine orders? No one is seriously making this calculation.

It is the same conflation as "the lockdown hurts the economy"/"an out of control pandemic hurts the economy"

Maybe being told to stay indoors spikes hopelessness, or it could be that living in a country with an out of control pandemic with no end in sight spikes hopelessness.

There's a lot of factors that make the world a stressful, bleak looking place besides stay at home orders.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#18
Funnily enough, yesterday an article appeared[1] claiming the number of suicides in the Netherlands has dropped up to 20 percent. Cause as of yet unknown. Also unclear whether this effect is temporary.

One hypothesis the article states is that in normal life people's sensory inputs are overwhelmed and cause anxiety. The sudden calmness the lockdown introduced might have a positive effect. This is, however, in contrast with the paired increased loneliness.

[1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2334626-tot-20-procent-minder-zelfdod...

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#19

At what point are more people killing themselves than are getting saved by quarantine orders? No one is seriously making this calculation.

maybe let's focus less on the lockdown as the cause of this, and more on the awful social security and mental health services. lockdown/quarantine doesn't suddenly turn normal people suicidal, it just escalates already existing economic hardships or mental problems.

also, should be obvious, but we cannot know how many more people would've died if there was no lockdown, so comparing numbers as they are today is really dumb.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#20

Funnily enough, yesterday an article appeared[1] claiming the number of suicides in the Netherlands has dropped up to 20 percent. Cause as of yet unknown. Also unclear whether this effect is temporary. One hypothesis the article states is that in normal life people's sensory inputs are overwhelmed and cause anxiety. The sudden calmness the lockdown introduced might have a positive effect. This is, however, in contras…

Similar suicide rate decline happened in Japan, decline of work stress factors (e.g. commuting, office, boss) are suspected as the cause.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/japan-suicides...

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