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

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

#71

Post by jxramos » Fri, May 22, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

jxramos wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it's interesting we're absorbing costs in known areas to unknown costs in unknown areas. I'd say focus on the known, and get more skeptical about the worst case scenarios we're comparing against. As always the "compared to what" question is sometimes not even an entity in reality for comparison but a hypothetical, maybe driven by fear.

Arguably, we know even less about by how much exactly "economic uncertainty, isolation, or lack of access to support" increases suicide rates than we know about how deadly the virus is.

I don't know about uncertainty per se or on isolation but I know at least with respect to economic downturns, recessions, and slumps and all the relation has been quantified to some extent by economists or social scientists from what I understand. Not sure how much the increase goes but it's considered a measurable thing apparently and has enough history to sketch out some kind of correlation from what I understand. Known territory in otherwords.

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

#72

Post by exmadscientist » Fri, May 22, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

noobaccount wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I immediately know two things about you: 1. You don’t live alone. 2. You have a job. I think we’re all a little short on empathy these days.

Huh. Point taken. Thank you for reminding me. You're correct in both guesses, and I do sometimes forget that I'm not suffering through the worst of it.

And:

3. You and your loved ones are not dealing with mental illnesses that were under control before the lockdown, but losing control during and after it.

This thing is really hard on some people.

(The above is not intended to castigate you or drag you through the mud. Just a reminder that everyone's a little different.)

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

#73

Post by csharptwdec19 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #42

mattigames wrote: post #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...

"When I don't drink water, I feel thirst" is a not a medical problem for your doctor to fix, it is a description of how humans work. "When I don't have social interaction, I feel despair" is the same. The healthcare system can at best poke the parameters of these systems around the margins. It's not going to eliminate human needs.

True...

But I'd argue that at least 25-50% of the US population is in a 'marginal' mental health situation to begin with.

Humans do tend to try to 'patch' these holes in various ways; A big theme in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' was filling the empty voids in your life with material/social wealth can come crashing down fast when you finally run out of gas, or those things that you're using to prop you up.

IOW, these people probably weren't in great shape before, but now that they don't have their crutches they finally crumble.

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

#74

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, May 22, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

exmadscientist wrote: post #72

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Point taken. Thank you for reminding me. You're correct in both guesses, and I do sometimes forget that I'm not suffering through the worst of it.

And: 3. You and your loved ones are not dealing with mental illnesses that were under control before the lockdown, but losing control during and after it. This thing is really hard on some people. (The above is not intended to castigate you or drag you through the mud. Just a reminder that everyone's a little different.)

That's a good point too, but honestly, the continued lockdown is getting to us too. Probably not enough to qualify for treatment, but enough to be mindful of our own mental states. But I know many others have it much worse.

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

#75

Post by ponker » Fri, May 22, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

It will be interesting to look at this by the standard Quality Adjusted Life-Years metric, since suicide is more common among young people who have more QALY to lose than typical coronavirus victims.

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

#76

Post by thisiszilff » Fri, May 22, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

noobaccount wrote: post #50

TeMPOraL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only many, many thousands of people die due to economic issues, that's still a huge win over what the virus would have done if left to run through the country at full speed. Economic problems would've happened anyway. Global supply chains were already in disarray even before March, as China essentially lost two months of manufacturing output, container ships stopped sailing, and the whole chain was pushed into osc…

I immediately know two things about you: 1. You don’t live alone. 2. You have a job. I think we’re all a little short on empathy these days.

I struggle to understand how those points are related to the substance of the post you're replying to. The situation OP describes is between bad & worse -- you can have empathy for people while recognizing the reality of the situation.

Are you arguing that OP's analysis of the situation is wrong because of a lack of empathy for people affected more severely by pandemic?

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

#77

Post by theWhores » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

SimplyUnknown wrote: post #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 contras…

Probably because business in Amsterdam is down.

With all the whores and drug addicts out of business, the profile for deaths of despair likely hinges that much on one single municipality/metro area.

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

#78

Post by theWhores » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

deathgrips wrote: post #9

>"We all share a concern for the health of our community whether that is COVID-19, mental health, intentional violence or other issues. We continue to actively work with our Behavioral Health Center, County Health and community organizations to increase awareness of mental health issues and provide resources to anyone in need. If you are in a crisis and need help immediately, please call 211 or 800-833-2900 or text '…

> Call us when you want to kill yourself.

(and what we'll do is have you arrested via ambulance, throw you in jail or a medical ward like a drunk, and not much else, unless you have insurance)

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

#79

Post by mindslight » Fri, May 22, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

ibejoeb wrote: post #8

deathgrips wrote: post #2

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

It's going to be impossible to track, but surely the financial ruin the governments have compelled people to endure is going to kill many, many thousands of people. It's also not politically advantageous to even consider it, let alone talk about it. In a year, when nobody cares anymore, and people are killing themselves, it will never come back to haunt the policy makers that provoked it all.

"Provoked" is not the right word. Policy makers reacted as slowly as possible, and in quite obtuse ways. The main benefit of the shutdowns was to allow for a few weeks where we could catch our breath from being caught woefully unprepared - proper equipment for healthcare workers, enough N95 masks and hand sanitizer for everybody, new procedures at businesses, etc. Instead politicians continued to do very little or even worked against positive action (just like the month before the shutdowns), and so the news cycle ran its course. Now people are bored of the stalemate, and have devolved into political camps arguing for/against stupid plan A xor stupid plan B. What we really needed and still need is competent leadership with competent public health and competent economic response, especially at the federal level.

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

#80

Post by salawat » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #43

mehrdadn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We don't know that was the right choice at all. This is a new, untested pandemic response that hasn't been used before, essentially a planet-scale experiment with everyone's futures: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distan... It had some definite opposition from experts when it was developed, and seems to have won out for political reasons.

Yes. We do know. We know very well it was the right decision; it is just difficult because China has decided to play coy and gaslight the rest of the world with their death figures, resulting in death rates having to be measured by indirect means such as number of funerary urns delivered, and terminated cell phone plans.

You do not screw around with highly communicable, severe upper respiratory diseases. Especially not while people's lungs are already being assaulted by high pollution levels.

Furthermore, Public health agencies are taking some things into account while dismissing others. CDC's guidelines for school reopening for instance demonstrate the highest level of both ignorance and wishful thinking I've ever seen in terms of keeping public education systems running. Parents don't check their kids health before sending them in on a regular basis, buses cannot get the job done running 1 kid to a seat, and there is no way you're keeping masks on kids, and a minimum distance of 6 feet separation between kids in place all day, every day in schools.

The suicides exceeding virus deaths indicates the measures are working. Once we start seeing meaningful localization of the virus to the point contact tracing can take over and allow the rest of us to let down our guard, then we can talk. Suicides aren't "contagious" in the way the virus is, and if you perform due diligence on your own, there is no reason you can't maintain levels of exposure to your social network. You just have a few more questions to ask people before coming over, and to be ready to play the contact tracing game if somebody you know gets sick.