Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) is only legal in 11 US states.
At best, it requires a diagnosis for a terminal illness with 6 months left to live.
Individuals with an Alzheimer’s or Dementia diagnosis are precluded from being able to make that choice, even if the diagnosis is recent and they still have most of their faculties.
We could be doing so much more to allow people to go out on their own terms and die a good death. It doesn’t have to be traumatic for family members, whoever discovers the body, or those who will inevitably clean up the aftermath.
Ever see the show Shameless? Very dark comedy throughout, mostly light hearted content. One episode had me balling. One of the main characters is having memory issues. They were sort of working their bucket list that reunited them with a friend that also had memory problems. The friend mentioned their spouse dying. Main character asks how they remembered. They had it written down on a post-it note on the fridge.
If I had to relive my wife dying every day because I forgot, just put me down.
My wife has a dementia patient for the past year who doesn’t remember being married and having children. She says he proposal to her about once a week. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think?
So the choice given to a dying old man faced with watching his “retirement” and healthcare costs drain whatever meager remains of the estate he might leave behind is faced with this choice:
A) Spend six figures on the various hoops needed to legally kill yourself. B) Spend 40 cents on a really good 9mm cartridge.
Medically assisted suicide doesn’t work in places without public healthcare. You can NEVER be certain that the decision isn’t driven by financial concerns, and like ALL HEALTHCARE IN THE US, its really only available to at least marginally wealthy people in the first place.
For real. Once I retire in a decade or so, I’ll try to live off social security for as log as possible, but once I need to dip into my savings, I’m just tapping my kid’s inheritance. At that point, death is the only financially rational option.
I knew someone who made use of a death with dignity law and one of the doctors that he had to see to get the OK legally had to entourage him to take his own life. Something along the lines of “I have to tell you that, instead of a peaceful drug-assisted death, you have the option to forgo eating and drinking until you die.”
The sad part is, some people have done that because in their area there was no legal medical assistance. I read an article a few years ago about a person who decided to go out that way. I can’t imagine how horrible it must be to be clawed by hunger pains for days until death. I’ve experienced hunger for days while waiting on a paycheck, but until death? That’s a whole new level of horror.
We put dogs down every day because they have incurable diseases or are suffering.
I had to put my dog down a few years ago because she was so old she could no longer get up or control her bladder or bowels, and I felt guilty for letting it get that far. I still remember the look in her eyes when they gave her the pain killers to knock her out, she looked so relieved.
I don’t understand how I get to make that decision for a dog, but a grown human, in most places, can’t make that call for themselves and go out in a peaceful and controlled manner. If I knew I was going to die painfully in a few months or a year, I’d definitely take an overdose or nitrogen asphyxiation over the disease. When dogs have a better way out than people, something is seriously wrong.
Too many people think the point of society is so you have others to take advantage of.
There unfortunately isn’t going to be a perfect answer here. I think most people would agree that a 17 year old in perfect health but depressed shouldn’t be able to die and I think most people would agree that 95 year old with a week to live in serious pain should be able to.
Where the line is, who gets to decide, and what criteria they use is always going to be something debatable. I generally think it should be decided by medical review boards and the most important criteria should be consent.
I had someone close to me with a terminal illness use a gun to end his suffering. He had a bottle of Oxy on his nightstand and a gun inside his nightstand and the only reason I can think that he decided to go the gun route was so he was sure that it’d be done. It sucks that he didn’t have any other options available that could have provided a more caring and humane way to exit. Instead now his wife has to live with having found him like that in bed, and my daughter has to live with the fact that she never got to say ‘goodbye’.
“There’s too much identity tied up in one’s work, so that is lost [after retirement]. And then there’s the cultural script of what maleness means in in our culture, so men just won’t admit or won’t receive care for depression because of that sense that it’s somehow not what a man does.”
What use is a cog that can’t cog anymore? Caring for elders is not built into our value system and not protected by our economic system.
Hell, it may be the only way to retire in a few more years.
deleted by creator
Maybe it isn’t about caring for them maybe it’s about teaching them to live with what they have. The skills for being retired are different than the skills of working. The skills of taking care of grandchildren are different than children.
We just sorta assume people know what to do when they get a certain age and maybe that isn’t a valid assumption. I am just thinking of an uncle I had whose health just crashed right after he stopped working. He didn’t add physical or mental work to make up for not working anymore. As opposed to some elderly I know who have loaded up the hobbies.
What use is a cog that can’t cog anymore? Caring for elders is not built into our value system and not protected by our economic system.
Also, what good is “care for depression” when the causes of depression aren’t a “chemical imbalance” but having to live in a partriarchal capitalist society that only values men for what they can provide?
What if constantly calling a system that fails men “the patriarchy” was part of the problem?
What if calling a system that blames all men for a system that benefits a tiny elite was a large reason why so many men are totally dead disenfranchised with the concept? If there was even a one percent chance that was true - would you stop it doing it?
What would you suggest instead? The “kyriarchy”? The “military-industrial-congressional complex”? How about getting fisted by the invisible hand of the market?
It’s a plutocracy, pretty much the textbook definition of it.
Why would I have to choose a name that specifically targets one demographic?
When are the Internet revolutionaries going to realise that choosing solutions that deliberately create division will… Wait for it… Create division.
How are you going to solve problems when you’re literally motivating people to resist you?
So?
We value capital here, not human life.
As an American, shouldn’t our glorious free capitalist market celebrate these depleted capital batteries taking themselves out of the equation and lowering the tax burden on our beloved job creators requiring social supports once they can no longer make them money as fast food employees or store greeters?
What kind of Americans would put value on human life that can no longer generate private shareholder value? Smh, ya’ll need to find supply side Jesus.
To be fair though, the common method is as American as
apple pie baseballvast homeless tent cities. 🇺🇸🎶 Oh say can you seeee…today’s mass shooting on teevee… 🎶🇺🇸Well see, capitalism isn’t about productivity. It’s about maximizing capital. More consumers means more spending, and more money moving to people maximizing capital. So… Capitalism hates the death of consumers and loves procreation even more.
But you’re only a consumer if you have money to spend. If you’re broke, you’re out of the market.
Removed by mod
To be fair, each additional person is a net gain for society’s wealth on average.
From earnings and potential earnings, people are. The elderly are the worst consumers by far, any piece of shit proud sociopathic capitalist will tell you that.
Worst? Well, it depends. 🙂 When the elderly are so fucking far gone, their minds are gone, and they require to be put into a home…if they happen to have built up wealth…it is extracted from them pretty quickly. They’re a consumer on steroids, providing jobs & income to others. A decent nursing home where I live will run $70K annually, and that doesn’t cover medications. Divide that by 365, their family is shelling out, at bare minimum, $191 every single day for them to “live”. That’s a lot of cash!
And thats a lot of terrible!
Leftists can’t do math, or they wouldn’t be leftists.
True dat.
TRUE DAT! no, my capslock isnt on.
✌️
No no no, we must keep them alive on life support for as long as their bank balance remains. Them after that we shall keep going until their entire family line is in debt to us. Brilliant!
You really don’t need to talk that way.
I genuinely wish I didn’t.
But Alas, this cruel nation makes respect impossible for me, and in lieu of any power, my only solace is making mockery of our unrepentant oppressors and this exploitation camp of a “society.”
I think others have mentioned this, but I’m disturbed that the article seems more concerned about guns than about the way our society and culture fails older men.
Sure it gets a mention but omg guns.
Get rid of all guns and gun suicides will plummet! It’s just obvious! Can’t you see that?! The problem is GUNS GUNS GUNS. After all, this is an anti gun article, right?! Wait… Why does the article mention suicide?
The idea of stopping suicide by removing the means is absolutely sick when you think about it.
Removing the means of suicide is the crudest, least helpful method of suicide prevention.
It’s also extremely cruel. Like if someone really wants to kill themselves due to ongoing unsolvable pain, they should absolutely have that right. Suicide is a human right.
Sure, of course we should do our best to provide options to solve their pain…even if they feel it is unsolvable, it might not be. It is important we do everything to show them that it might actually be solvable. I’m not denying we need more of those supports for people considering suicide. But like, if they have tried absolutely everything and are in a constant state of pain then only a truly evil person would force them to continue to suffer. It’s fundamentally immoral.
Children are able to understand why putting a suffering dog down in the right course of action, but somehow a majority of adults seem unable to draw the same conclusion around people with incurable terminal illnesses that make people suffer immensely (for example ALS).
Get rid of all guns and gun suicides will plummet!
Shouldn’t you guys be somewhere crying out mental health in the replies to yet another mass shooting article?
Sure you can kill yourself other ways, and society isn’t great to older men, or men, or women, or infants, or whatever…but guns deliver instant death that is just barely on this side of the line of premeditated.
The rise in suicide rates also coincides with lax gun laws if you have read anything about the subject.
Think about the last time you had a long, lonely night, it was miserable, right? What if you had an instant way of ending it all right that moment at the height of your torment, and that method was within arm’s reach?
Guns can easily turn a bad night into a person’s last night. Expand outreach for mental health and work on improving society in other ways, sure, but continuing to provide ubiquitous, instant means to kill yourself and others does zero to solve any of society’s ills.
What a load of horse shit.
Wedging guns is nothing but disingenuous.
Suicide is caused by depression. Not guns, Depression.
Higher male suicide rates is caused by the fact that men ACT on it more than women. This is well studied and understood by even first year university students in social studies. The only way to stop it from occurring is before men and women ACT on it. Address the cause depression, and it will improve outcomes.
Programs like, “Black dog institute”, “Are you OK”, “Mens shed Associations”, or best yet, clinical help, Break the stigma of men reaching out for help.
Higher male suicide rates is caused by the fact that men ACT on it more than women. This is well studied and understood by even first year university students in social studies.
-
social studies isn’t a fucking college level course, you talking about sociology?
-
how do you even measure “acting on it” more often? I’ve read several things that said that women attempt suicide more often than men, but men more often “succeed”… Largely because of the means they choose
-
guns don’t cause suicide depression does is the same shitty argument that assholes like you have with guns don’t kill people, people kill people
Guns are integral to quick, thoughtless suicide, and if you actually look at the statistics vs the policy or do any actual reading it’ll tell you the same despite the gun industry trying to prevent research in the area to increase gun sales.
Yes depression is a problem that ought to be dealt with, but it helps nobody to provide lonely, depressed old men with ubiquitous access and fetishization of instant death.
And lastly, go fuck yourself and your whole tone.🖕
- social studies isn’t a fucking college level course, you talking about sociology?
Depending on where you live it is college or ts university, first year
- how do you even measure “acting on it” more often? I’ve read several things that said that women attempt suicide more often than men, but men more often “succeed”… Largely because of the means they choose
Death, well established and not studied enough
- guns don’t cause suicide depression does is the same shitty argument that assholes like you have with guns don’t kill people, people kill people
Its sad how obsessed you are with guns, really sad
Fact America is not in the top 20 countries for suicide. I would like to think because its quality of life, but like all things its more nuanced.
Guns don’t cause suicide, depression (the big killer) results in suicide and its causes are many. Access to suicidal means may help with a little bit of time sometimes; best case scenario. However if the cause is never addressed the end result will always be the same so just conflating the issue and the cycle continues on.
Australia got rid of guns in 1996.
The only person fetishizing guns and suicide is you! Stop wedging the desperate to your disingenuous cause,.
The only person fetishizing guns and suicide is you! Stop wedging the desperate to your disingenuous cause
You got me, I’m actually a desperate, anti gun lobbyist…a position that pays equally well to a George Soros professional protestor. /s (because you’re an idiot)
Edit: fucking article itself says most involve guns and people are like 🙉🙈
-
deleted by creator
Fr in amarica wel fix everything but the thing creating the problem. Baning guns ain’t gonna make people less depressed, less isolated, less valiant and the only people that feel safer are people who didn’t have issues to begin with.
Removed by mod
Apparently it is “partisan clickbait” because it talks about a real issue in the USA and that rustles their fucking jimmies apparently.
The real issue is that assisted suicide is basically illegal in the USA…you turned it into a gun issue…
Its a gun issue because most people see that as the “easiest” way of achieving it because they haven’t done even cursory basic research into effective suicide methods.
Just because it is illegal doesn’t mean a gun is the only option.
Guns are used in dumb fits of passion because it is easy and at-hand for a lot of people.
If someone wants to off themself, they’re going to do it whether they have a gun or not. Look at Japan, higher suicide rate than the US, virtually no guns in their society. Americans typically use guns because it’s quick and available. Even if guns weren’t available, suiciders are gonna suicide. So yeah, it absolutely is not a gun issue, it’s a societal issue, be it depression or lack of availability of assisted suicide.
If someone wants to off themself, they’re going to do it whether they have a gun or not
Not supported by science nor statistics. There is no better way to reveal that not only are you not an expert, you havent even made a token effort to be informed.
Instead, you’ve just assumed you know everything there is to know about suicide prevention without looking and what a surprise, it just happens to align with whats most profitable for the gun lobby.
So you’re saying that if I wanted to suicide I won’t if I don’t have a gun. What an odd take.
This sounds like the terrible logic of banning abortion. If we ban abortion then women won’t have abortions. /S
No that this is sarcasm because legalizing abortion has saved many women’s lives
So you’re saying that if I wanted to suicide I won’t if I don’t have a gun. What an odd take.
its not that odd. pressing a trigger is much easier than hanging yourself or cutting yourself or jumping. this is a fact. plus many people attempt suicide and fail and some of them dont attempt anymore. with a gun the chances of not being successful are very low.
So you’re saying that if I wanted to suicide I won’t if I don’t have a gun. What an odd take.
Not just me, but everybody involved in suicide prevention. It doesn’t matter how unintuitive you find it, means reduction works.
Suicide is an impulse and when people have access to guns, they can act on that impulse in minutes, if not seconds. It’s painless and requires zero preparation time.
What other method even comes close?
You might have the tools to slit your wrists, but it hurts, it’s easy to get wrong, takes much longer than you’d think and sucks the entire time.
It’s also extemely difficult to seriously injure yourself on purpose. Most people have heard of “hesitation marks” but nobody has heard of “hesitation gunshots”, because they’re not a thing.
Okay, so what about hanging? For most people, step 1 is going to be Googling “how to tie a noose”, which will immediately present them with local suicide prevention resources.
So fuck it, lets head outside.
Maybe jump off something high? How long would it take you to get to a bridge or building that would definitely be fatal? Would you need to drive? Would you need directions? Could you leave without anybody asking where you were going? Once you got there, could you climb on the edge without being seen by passers by, all of whom will immediately try and help you or call someone who can.
And of course once you were looking out over the edge, could you do it? It’s terrifying and a very primal survival instinct will tell you to stop. Even once you jump, you’re still not arriving at oblivion faster than someone with a gun would.
Maybe you could overdose on something? The 90s made it look so cool. But of course, few people have fatal amounts of drugs just laying around and for most people, it’s far quicker and easier to go to a gun store.
So whats left? Shit that practically nobody does, despite the pro-gun community insist every suicide method is the same. People don’t gouge their eyes to get to their brain or feed themselves into a tablesaw.
This sounds like the terrible logic of banning abortion. If we ban abortion then women won’t have abortions. /S
No, it doesn’t sound like that at all, you just want to signal to others that you’re not right wing but still love guns.
But sure, we can stick with that analogy. Do women who aren’t pregnant still have abortions? Do they just find another medical proceedure to have instead?
No that this is sarcasm because legalizing abortion has saved many women’s lives
If you’re pro gun, there’s no use pretending “saving womens lives” is a thing you care about. 70 women are shot and killed by their partners each month, over 4 million report being threatened with a gun.
Abusers with access to guns are 5x more likely to kill their partners and guess what the gun lobby does? Openly opposes domestic abusers losing their guns.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t had depressed friends off themselves after years of trying to talk them off the ledge. I don’t give two fucks what your statistics or science say about it, I’ve lived it. So eat a bag of dicks and shut the fuck up about shit you’ve only read about on the internet.
Edit: down vote all you want you little bitch. I sincerely hope you take that attitude to someone in real life and they kick the absolute shit out of you, maybe then you’ll realize your sheltered view of the world doesn’t align with reality. Go touch grass.
Edit: down vote all you want you little bitch. I sincerely hope you take that attitude to someone in real life and they kick the absolute shit out of you, maybe then you’ll realize your sheltered view of the world doesn’t align with reality. Go touch grass.
Glorious. Downvotes are actually publicly visible on Lemmy and it wasnt me, but sure, go off.
Don’t get embarassed though, you’re still very big and scary and the “go touch grass” still hurts my feelings no matter how many times right wing reactionaries use it, because I’m that insecure.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t had depressed friends off themselves after years of trying to talk them off the ledge.
I sincerely want to be sympathetic because I do know what thats like.
But its easy enough to swallow that compassion when I remember that you’re only pulling out that trauma and heartbreak to defend gun laws that rob thousands of people of the chance to escape that same fate.
Because you don’t get to “talk people off the ledge” when they have a gun. There is no ledge. Those critical opportunities for help and self-reflectance, that have saved thousands of people from bridges, rooftops and bathtubs full of blood, are all lost.
And the people talked off ledges don’t just find another ledge. Only 1 in 10 people who survive a suicide attempt go on to die by suicide, but the survival rate of self inflicted gunshot wounds is functionally zero.
Its why, if someone you care about is struggling with depression or trauma, the very last thing you should do is give them a gun.
Fortunately for the gun-lobby, the only people gun owners seem to care about is themselves, no matter now many of their children blow their brains out with daddy’s poorly secured firearm that he bought to “keep his family safe”.
I don’t give two fucks what your statistics or science say about it,
it was obvious to all of us :)
Suicide is not a uniquely American problem, nor is higher male suicides. In fact America does not even make the top 20. Depression is the well understood cause of suicide. Depression has many many factors. From simple inheritance, to money, relationships, drugs, disease, and much more. Those are the causes. The only way to stop it, is mental health services, awareness, compassion, support and specifically for men, breaking the social stigma. Break the generational social contract that makes mental health for males taboo and only then will we achieve even suicide rates across genders.
Oh look you’ve brought genitals into it here too, even though you can’t connect it to anything I’ve said this time, even with your eagerness to make wild stretches based on seeing the words “women” and “suicide” within 3 inches of one another.
As for the rest of your post, once again, I’m not the one arguing against evidence based suicide prevention, the pro-gun people are.
To put it bluntly, you sounds like someone that’s struggling to combine “standing in solidarity with your fellow far-right reactionaries in the pro-gun community” with “doing your duty as a MRA by talking about suicide statistics like they’re women’s fault”.
Wow…yes it’s the guns fault, not that our society is so fucked that people are offing themselves like crazy…naa it’s the gun doing it. The fuck outta here.
I didn’t say it was the guns fault. Even if we fixed a boatload of societal problems, guns still don’t help these situations, and you’d still have people using them because they’re available.
The idea that they don’t contribute to the problem is laughable.
They do, but they are not the root cause, and focusing on them is a distraction.
It’s not a distraction though.
The vast majority of attempted suicide survivors regret ever trying. They get help and live better lives.
When someone is in a bad state of mind or having a depressed episode that is the time when they are most vulnerable.
Having easy access to an immediate life ending device with the squeeze of a trigger is a major problem.
This is the reason jump nets and barriers work on bridges. Making it slightly harder or more inconvenient to kill themselves saves lives.
typical “buh muh guns” response
Its not a distraction – it’s an immediate, measurable solution to a growing problem, that absolutely nobody is suggesting is the entire solution.
Meanwhile, what have the pro-gun groups that insist they (and they alone) have the solution suggested?
Video games. Marilyn Manson. Rock and rap music. Not enough prayer. Too many doors. Abortion. Legalised weed. Women. Drag Queens and gay marriage. COVID vaccines. Critical race theory. Not enough people having guns.
And what a surprise, every single one of those excuses is just blatantly something they want to attack anyway, using the “look what you made me do” excuse loved by manipulative abusers everywhere.
The boomers blame popular culture. The fundamentalists blame secularism and abortion. The fascists blame minorities. The neoliberals blame their donors not making enough money.
After 25 years of offering nothing by distractions, some marketing genius thought of “mental health”, which is at least part of the problem.
But of course their take away isnt “clearly we are not mentally healthy enough as a society for such permissive gun laws”, nor even “we should do something about the mental health problems are facing”.
Instead, it’s “Other people should build a mental health system that is mandatory for every man, woman and child in America, even if they don’t want help. It has to cure mental health problems, even those beyond our ability to treat, instantly and so completely that they will never relapse, even for a second. Also, we are going to obstruct your efforts every step of the way politically, legally and by telling children they’re less important that inanimate objects used to kill and oppress people”.
Because the idea was never to fix the problem, the idea was to create something that would distract people for 200 years, so the money would keep rolling in.
But don’t worry if the skepticism has already started to creep into your brain with intrusive thoughts like “does this mean we train soldiers to be mentally ill?” or “are they trying to say that being a right wing reactionary like most mass shooters (and gun owners) is actually a mental illness?”…
MTG has already come out and blamed mass shootings on the medication we use to treat mental health problems, ensuring gun owners still have the backup distraction of “too much mental healthcare”, ready to be used the day people meet their impossible prerequisites for gun control.
how do you see these alarming suicide rates and think " oh we should give them a better way to kill themselves " instead of " why in the hell is that many people wanting to die???"
Because if you understand the stats, the majority of people who are committing suicide are older, and more than likely have a illness they no longer want to live with. I’m all for single payer, but I’m not here to tell someone they should suffer when they want to take their life. That’s not mine or your choice.
This is a really sad state of affairs for older guys.
Imagine a guy who gets to 55+ and takes a look at his life and realize he’s not where he wants to be and it feels like there’s no chance to restart. Maybe he just didn’t get into the housing market in time or start his 401k. Maybe some health issues or divorces blew out his savings.
These are the guys who were out of college right before the world was flipped upside down by technology, so I’m sure a lot of them never thought they had to catch up to keep their career running.
It would be really hard to not see it as a personal total failure, and to be frank their family and peers might see it that way too if they know. It probably feels like standing at the base of Everest when he should have the summit in sight.
His peers are either feeling depressed like him or they are jetting around on holidays most of the time.
Guys are taught most of their life to stuff the emotional things, so the future feels hopeless because he’s in a bubble and doesn’t understand how common this feeling is.
I hope we can find more ways to let guys like this, and all people, know that this feeling is temporary and there is a lot of hope waiting at the next turn.
Maybe he needs a bit of a boost from some antidepressants and someone to talk with who can help him let it all out. Or maybe he just needs a society that sees him as someone with something left to give, who still has jobs to be done, and that’s enough.
Everyone saying it’s ridiculous to prevent people from killing themselves needs to keep in mine that these rules are generally in placw to prevent vulnerable people, including and especially the elderly, from being convinced to kill themselves so junior can inherit their house. People are bastards and absolutely will take advantage of more lax euthanasia laws to rid themselves of “troublesome” or “useless” people.
Yeah… this isn’t “it’s my time, I’m ready”, this seems more “I live in a system that has made my every waking day a depressing and fear filled nightmare, convinced of my own worthlessness, with death as my only release”.
But I want my kid to inherit my house. I’ll be damned if I piss it away on a bunch of entities compelling me to stay alive so they can drain everything I’ve accumulated. Fuck them. End me while there’s still something left.
Ban guns that will fix the mental health problem…
Sarcasm for those unable to spot click bait. Might as well have titled the story “Death the leading cause of suicide among elderly men”…
Why does the US mentality always revolve around a single cause?
It’s clear that the availability of an instantaneous way to end your life on a whim with zero effort and zero percieved pain is going to facilitate a lot of suicides. No, banning it wont stop suicide, but it would absolutely reduce them. To suggest otherwise is simply statistically disingenuous, regardless of how much you have the right to bear them or not.
But if guns are part of the US identity and culture then so be it, but that means spending on mental health outcomes and prevention need to dramatically increase.
It’s a cost either way, whichever side of the gun debate you are on
Oh buddy, thinking it’s 0 perceived pain is something I’d like to understand. Why do people think gunshots don’t cause pain?
Nitrogen ftw.
Let’s see how well it goes in Alabama for that death row inmate whose lethal injection they fucked up the first time.
Is that what they’re doing?
I don’t know how I feel about that. I hate that the state gets to choose who dies, but nitrogen isn’t a bad death.
Imagine feeling like a human for sparing someone a horrendous death.
My friend, we have so long to go.
If you understand suicide even a little bit you would know men do not fuck about when it comes to suicide. There is little in between, no cry’s for help they are rare. guns are a tool to achieve the outcome and the statistics will never change.
So this click bait title is just stupid anti-gun garbage. Men will ALWAYS be the higher suicide rate no matter what.
Up next water is wet.
If you understood even a little bit about suicide you would understand that sucidial ideation proceeds action, and ideation involves stimulus from the immediate locale.
ideation involves stimulus from the immediate locale
locale
What a load of garbage.
If you understood suicide even a little bit you would know that DEPRESSION proceeds action! Wow. The only way to stop suicide is to address the underlying cause: Depression. Depression requires support from, employers, colleagues, family, friends, and most importantly, mental health support services. Its literally that simple. Depression kills all and plenty of studies have found the cause for men is the fact they act on it more. This is not a unique American problem. Why do men act on it? Because its a part of the social and gender values, ingrained into generations.
Toxic masculinity is what you’re describing. It’s very prevalent in the US. Guns are part of that toxic male culture.
Yes?
we should ban rope as well just to be safe
Evolution has never stopped. Humans are simply creating new selection pressures. Humans are cruel to each other so that some will kill themselves. This will remain the case until cooperation becomes a dominant survival strategy.
Damn dude. I think this too and it’s crazy to see someone else explain this.
Well, cooperation is a dominant survival strategy. But that does not mean it’s fair or that everyone will be an even slightly equally beneficial party.
Idk… sounds too much like social Darwinism
Yes but evolution is natural, this rat race that pushes people to suicide it’s entirely fabricated.
Guns just add dangerous violence to everything.
In a shooting event, the “good guy” trying to stop a bad guy with a gun can still accidentally hit innocent bystanders with bullets. By adding more bullets flying, they’ve effectively made the situation more dangerous, and now when incompetent cops show up, they’ll think anyone with a gun is the shooter.
In a suicide, you’re not only risking it not working because you didn’t explode enough of your own head, you’re also putting other people in danger, depending on the caliber of bullet and gun used. You could easily have the bullet exit the back of your head and enter your neighbors apartment and harm someone on the other side. You could also live through your attempted suicide and have an even worse life with a totally disfigured face.
Guns make everything worse.
If you need defense in a shooting/violent attack, carry a high-powered flashlight that you can temporarily blind an attacker with, allowing you and others to escape in their confusion and/or get close enough to disarm the assailant.
If you want to off yourself, buy a fucking Exit Bag and get some god damned helium.
Art imitates life. I equate it to using a weapon as literary device. If you’re reading a book and the author mentions a gun on the table, that gun will be used.
Think of how many minor traffic accidents or drunk arguments at birthday parties result in deadly consequences because just like our author, if someone has a gun, they may use it.
deleted by creator
Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. There’s alot of stuff I don’t agree with op on but I believe he is entitled to an opinion and is entitled to share that opinion and so are you
deleted by creator
did the americans find out about lemmy? wtf is this comment section??
None think about having to clean up all their blood and brain matter left over. Suicide is so selfish.
Ironically your comment is incredibly selfish (you need to walk in their shoes) and based on nothing but your imagination. Some may take precautions to minimize cleanup.
deleted by creator
thank you. its nice to hear or in this case read someone put it out so sanely and clearly. I do not get why other people feel they should tell someone else that they have to continue to exist because they know better than them.
deleted by creator
Calling people who suffer from suicidal ideation or committed suicide selfish is exactly like calling kids with down syndrome idiots.
deleted by creator
Yikes.
It’s also selfish to force people to suffer due to our personal moral scruples. Allow assisted suicide.
deleted by creator
Not so easily as you say.
Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia are curable, are they?
deleted by creator
Alzheimer’s, if caught early, can be cured.
-YoBuckStopsHere
deleted by creator
"Current Alzheimer’s treatments temporarily improve symptoms of memory loss and problems with thinking and reasoning.
These Alzheimer’s treatments boost the performance of chemicals in the brain that carry information from one brain cell to another. They include cholinesterase inhibitors and the medicine memantine (Namenda). However, these treatments don’t stop the underlying decline and death of brain cells. As more cells die, Alzheimer’s disease continues to progress."
-literally your own source
I try not judge these folks too harshly, they must be in incredible pain.
deleted by creator
And that’s the whole problem. Medical help is so expensive you need medical help after medical help.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
No, they’re not in pain? Really?
deleted by creator
Someone who doesn’t want help is not going to seek help. Your “solution” is as insane as telling a schizophrenic person to just stop listening to voices. Your understanding of mental illness is both offensive to those of us who suffer from it and just simply ignorant. Until you get a degree in psychology, maybe you shouldn’t be lecturing other people about what they should do about their mental illnesses.
deleted by creator
Yes, they do want help. They always want help.
Is this in your expert psychological opinion?
👍
That kind of gun-assisted suicide at least, for sure. There’s still deaths of despair that are far from selfish acts, and moreso acts of desperation.
deleted by creator
It’s rare to find a lack of empathy, intelligence together with ignorance in one single comment. Well done.
deleted by creator
Well done again. Your ability to come across as even more callous and ignorant than you already had is truly impressive.
deleted by creator
And now you’ve added twisting peoples words to make yourself look better.
Have you considered a career as a landlord? Or a conservative politician? You’re a natural fit.
Of course they refused to get help. THEY WERE SUICIDAL. Do you even understand the concept of that? If you want to die, you don’t want help. I know because I’ve been there.
deleted by creator
Your solution to suicidal people is that they should get help. I’m explaining to you why they don’t. You’re telling them to do something they can’t do. They are not mentally able to ask for help.
And some of us, like me, are just in excruciating pain every single day.
90% of people cannot afford and environment change, not that such cures depression. Some people are less treatable, and many depression medications actually heighten suicidal feelings.
deleted by creator
That’s what you offer. You don’t just magically cure mental illness. Nor do you just magically have money to change your situation.
Helluva lot easier to say when you’re not actively in the depths of it
To be fair you’re making an assumption here that may or may not be true
deleted by creator
depression cured by drugs is not a cure and ironically often lead to more suicide since it lightens the depression enough to get the person to take action.
deleted by creator
So do something about it.
deleted by creator
As a military veteran, I give a shit. Having access to a gun seems a lot easier to those in despair than seeking help. It’s why it’s important we make access to firearms extremely difficult in the future.
deleted by creator
this. why does anyone else have a say in if I live or die outside of me. FYI i am not looking to die but when I decide to I want to be “allowed” to. and I don’t give a fuck if someone else thinks the reason is not adequate.
Wall Street is selfish. Taking more profit than you need is selfish.
These people were desperate. Many likely due to rampant American capitalistic selfishness forcing them to subsist on catfood so business crooks can have 2 vacation homes and 5 expensive cars instead of everyone benefitting from market prosperity.
Selfishness is America’s brand, but being driven to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger isn’t selfishness, it is largely a consequence of other’s selfishness. Our suicide rates are extreme in the supposedly “developed” world because selfish people demand everything and we let them do it at societal expense.
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Guns are life. My rule to live by is “Love, Hate, Guns, and Ammo.”
