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.
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.
“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.
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.
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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.
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… 🎶🇺🇸Removed by mod
TRUE DAT! no, my capslock isnt on.
✌️
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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”.
Good job in taking a serious issue and putting an unnecessary partisan spin on it, CNN. The issue of guns needs to be sidelined when talking about issues as serious as suicide.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-rate-by-country
I don’t really see the problem with elderly people who decide they want to check out. If we allowed medically assisted death, they could die with dignity.
Most of it is caused by depression, not terminal illness.
Still need the option to check out on your own terms.
what about improving their material condition so they can enjoy being old like other people in civilized countries???
These are not mutually exclusive.
That would be great. You realize TWO things are possible, right?
I imagine in many cases depression caused by their failing bodies and inability to lead a happy life due to it. That and their partner probably recently dying.
Doesn’t change my opinion
If Republicans actually gave a shit about mental health maybe we wouldn’t have so many gun suicides.
Or suicides generally.
So suicide is a republican problem hey.
Get a grip.
They’re the ones who keep saying “it’s not a gun problem it’s a mental health problem” and then doing fuck all to improve mental health, so yeah.
In this instance they are actually correct
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 and stupid anti-gun garbage does not help and makes the issue harder to resolve. Men will ALWAYS be the higher suicide rate no matter what. Social support systems and mental health stigma for men needs to change.
Up next water is wet.
But they still won’t vote for comprehensive mental health coverage, and most of the men in the Republican party are poster boys for toxic masculinity.
So? You’re obsessing over a political farce unless you want to join the party?
I have a problem with blatant hypocrisy. Every gun nut in this thread saying “it’s not guns it’s mental health” and “men have a mental health crisis” and then go vote for assholes who do nothing to help either of them, and then say it’s the Democrats who are the problem.
Your oversimplification was unnecessary the first time, stop copypasting your comments.
Said the asshole adding nothing to the topic to wedge anti-guns
Yeah but then they’d have even more mental gymnastics to do with bootstraps and all that
Suicide isnt reported in many places, because it is a social and religious taboo. For example the greek orthodox church still refuses to bury people who killed themselves(and 99% of greeks used to be christian orthodox, though atheism is becoming more popular nowadays).
Do they still refuse to bury unbaptized kids as well?
Only if they were allowed to bugger them first.
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.
Idk… sounds too much like social Darwinism
Yes but evolution is natural, this rat race that pushes people to suicide it’s entirely fabricated.
ITT gun nuts immediately defending tools designed to quickly kill
downvoters are presumably said gunhead lobotomites
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…
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.
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.
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”.
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 :)
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.
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.
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
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
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.
we should ban rope as well just to be safe
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did the americans find out about lemmy? wtf is this comment section??
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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
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Guns are life. My rule to live by is “Love, Hate, Guns, and Ammo.”
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.
Guns have nothing to do with this and you fell victim to partisan click-bait. You got perfectly distracted from the real issue of suicide, it seems.
You are making some bold assumptions that a person that is in that headspace actually gives a fuck about anything else or anyone else.
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.
