Thoughts on Mental Health/Suicide

During a piece about Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade on CBS' Sunday Morning, it was said, that in the US, suicide now kills more people than both car accidents and murder. Twice as many as murder, in fact. The doctor/expert being interviewed, placed the blame squarely on our "inadequate" and "dysfunctional" health care system, which is definitely a good place to start, but no one had much to say about the reason why such a large percentage of the population is suffering from major depression. A number that's been growing steadily since 1999 according to the CDC.

Environmental scientists use frogs, and salamanders, and bees as indicator species. When they start dying off in large numbers or go missing from what should be their natural habitats, scientists know their ecosystem has been wrecked by pollution, and they can use that information to predict what the Earth will be like if we don't stop treating it like a hazardous waste dump.

Maybe the rise in the number of people suffering from depression, anxiety, and substance abuse...to the point where committing suicide seems like the only way to end their suffering, should be considered a pretty good indicator that something is wrong with our "ecosystem." The way we live together, communicate and interact with each other, the way we treat one another - Society. It seems we've polluted that too, and created a culture no longer conducive to supporting human life. We are a culture dependent on drugs - both legal and illegal - that demands constant entertainment and distractions and not-so-subtle reminders that being unhappy is the norm. There's probably something wrong with you if you don't find American culture depressing and society, in general, the people around you, sometimes just waking up in the morning, unbearable. What's really unfortunate is that we now have the tools to come together and call bullshit, and change the things that need to be changed. And yet, we use those tools to highlight our differences and alienate each other in the process.

Great post. All true imho.

I think the bottom line is that people with mental health issues need to be respected as much as everyone else. We need to change how we look at people with mental health issues in this country.

I think suicide is great, being in control of your own death, I don't see anything wrong with it. If you wanna go, go. Try and do it in the way that minimizes trauma to whomever finds you or survives you. I definitely plan on going out by my own hand, and always have. I don't see suicide as a result of poor mental health. In some cases, it very well may be the rational thing to do.

The reasons people are driven to suicide are many, as are the reasons why suicide has gone up since 1999 in the US. On top of the myriad of singular, personal, circumstantial issues a person might be brought to suicide, there is definitely a fatalistic feeling about the future among at least some of us, about a whole host of issues, all worth offing yourself over!

Certainly everyone being overprescribed medications that have side effects of, say, causing suicide, might have something to do with the rise over the last twenty years! I completely agree with Irving on that one!

I'm sure the economic reality of the last twenty years didn't help; suicide was up during The Great Depression so it stands to reason that the same would hold true during the Great Recession (and the lousy economy that preceded it for 8 years). There's also the paranoia and grief that came in after 9/11 (Spalding Grey killed himself in reaction to 9/11; a friend of mine killed his brother's wife and then himself a few months after 9/11, which he was consumed by...etc etc). We live in an oversexed society, so pinning your ego and hopes and dreams on love and lust and fuckability (forgive my French) and needing that validation from another person may result in disappointment....side effects include thoughts of suicide, lol.......

I think (illegal) drug addicts kill themselves accidentally more than by suicide! Not sure I agree that illegal drugs are driving people to suicide.

As it's been said: it's not a symptom of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society. We live in shallow, ignorant, ugly times with shallow, ignorant ugly people. I say, bring on the kool-aid, Reverend Jim! Where do I get in line?!

If all this press and media attention helps raise the kind of awareness that leads to changes in our effed-up health care system I'm all for it. However, the question that still needs to be answered is: why is such a huge percentage of the population miserable in the first place? We're the wealthiest country on the planet...for starters, no one should be starving to death, no one should be homeless, and no one should be denied the help that they need for lack of funds. Imagine a world where people contribute what they can based on what they're good at and enjoy doing. Instead of working jobs we hate just so we can survive, survival would be guaranteed...productivity would go through the roof; towns and cities would be beautiful, filled with art, and culture and happy people creating things. The ugly work would get done too, the infrastructure, the roads and the bridges and shit...for the same reason we mow the lawn and trim the hedges and neighbors help you put a fucking roof on your house or stop to help you fix a flat. Because that's what people do, and if you take away the red tape and bureaucracy that slows everything down, and just make the materials available to the people who know how to do things, the guys and girls handy with tools, shit will get done. If we started treating our country like our neighborhood and took away the stress and anxiety that comes with trying to survive this fucked up system we're all doomed to exist in, ...things would be better. Right, so call me a dreamer and a loon, but I know I'm on to something. It'll happen, if not here, maybe Mars, who knows? Someone has got to cop on.

Interesting thoughts, Krebb. Brings up the song "Imagine" by John Lennon... If only.

One of the things I like to do (or did when I had more time) is martial arts and I started to focus on self-protection based styles. I was training with a really good instructor a few years back. He was a similar age to me and we had really good training sessions. As well as being an instructor who was also a counselor with degrees in psychology. He said to me once after a training session something that stuck with me. He said the reality was we were more likely to kill ourselves than we were to have to use any of this stuff against an assailant. He then went on to tell me the stats. I'm in the sweet spot apparently.

So Krebb raises a good point. Why does life seem so hopeless to so many that we would rather take our own lives than struggle on? Why do so many feel life is not worth living? Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist thinks the world is getting better, even though the indicators are going the other way. We all think things are getting worse.

This is shaping up to be a long rambling post and I should really get some sleep but I'm going to have a go anyway and pick on two factors: the media (mainstream and social) and the rise of individualism.

Starting with mainstream media, the old maxim 'if it bleeds, it leads' holds true. We are presented with binary options. Black and white, left and right, right and wrong with very little room for voices of moderation. The media also shows us reporters in wartorn X, informs of us of death tolls, corruption, injustice etc. It's not in their interest to show the story where a community came together and two sides of an issue talked things out like adults and worked out a solution. Hence we are constantly inundated with the bad stuff, filtered through the relevant political lens.

Then you have social media. 800 friends on facebook and no-one to talk to. That's pretty much a meme now. Everyone is the star of their own movie and gets that dopamine hit from likes, retweets, thumbs up, shares etc. I don't do the social media thing but if I post a story here or a drawing on deviantART, the feedback makes a difference to how I feel and my motivation to do more. Social media isn't really bringing people together in the way (I believe) it was originally intended. Instead it lets you see how everyone's life is so much better than yours. Everyone has more friends, more fun and more excitement than you, so you feel shit by comparison. Except it's all just perception. Facebook is where you lie about your life and promote the image of yourself you want people to have of you. Twitter is where the blue egg of anonymity takes out all the filters and you can really be yourself. Think about this - instagram celebrity is a job now. You can make more money being pretty and posting photos, workout clips and the last smoothie you had than some people who went into debt and worked their ass off for a college degree.

Which leads into individualism. I think I heard this from documentary maker Adam Curtis. He said the rise of the individual can be traced back to the 1960s/70s. He points out the civil rights movement as the last time a group of people came together and put themselves in harm's way because they believed it was the right thing to do and it would make the world a better place. There was no personal glory involved, no virtue signalling, no social media plaudits. The activists undertook a hazardous task and if you've seen Mississippi Burning, some paid the ultimate price. Would we have a civil rights movement in the same way today where it was purely about working towards something greater than the individual for no thought of glory? The pessimist in me says no. Not when people can just change their flair on social media and that still counts and gives the right optics.

This isn't to promote collectivism as a response, it's to try and make the point that we have lost our sense of community. We don't look after one another the way we used to. Evolutionary psychology suggests we are hardwired to thrive in small communities where we would each know an optimum number of people (circa 150) including casual acquaintances and your nearest and dearest. But instead we're back to the hundreds of friends on social media and no-one to talk to. Loneliness is an increasing problem and it's a killer. Lack of meaningful human contact is said to be as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

So the media makes everything look shit, social media makes us feel shit and we don't look after each other anymore. Society is kind of broken and it doesn't help that the leaders we have (and those who would take their place) all seem to want to drive by looking in the rear view mirror when the road ahead is completely uncharted territory. They all use models that were developed in the 18th and 19th century. Even Keynesian economics goes back to the 1930s and that's the new kid on the block.

I had a point when I started writing this but damn if I can remember what it was now. Try this - things look messed up so we feel messed up but how much of that is perception? We're in a time where reality is a question, not a state. Get off social media, fuck Zuckerberg, the twitter guy (Dorsey?) and the rest of them, switch off the news, go outside and talk to a human being. Even if it's just the grocery clerk or whatever. You don't need a whirlwind romance or a lifelong friendship, just ask someone how their day is going. Does any of this mean depression and anxiety will be cured and everything will be wonderful? No of course not, but maybe it's the first step in creating the kind of world we'd like to live in rather than the one we're told we live in. And maybe in this world not as many people end up feeling stressed, anxious, lonely, depressed and thing that suicide is the only answer.

If all this sounds like bullshit it's because I'm very clearly not the answer to the world's problems. I'm a guy who sometimes writes stories about a fictional sexy spy character who gets tied up and tickled a lot but this is the best I could come up with at 11pm on a Wednesday night.

Lack of funding, Medicaid passed which didn't cover people in mental institutions so they moved those people to regular hospitals, nursing homes, jail, the street. Can no longer institutionalize people as easily against their will. Recession cut about $5 billion in public mental health funds (largest cut since deinstitutionalization.)

There are 43,000 psychiatric beds in the United States, or about 14 beds per 100,000 people—the same ratio as in 1850.

My good friend Suikoden raises a good point about the size of a sustainable community - when "sustainable" includes the emotional and psychological health of the people within the community. Eventually, the human race should exist in a sort of Planetary Community - Citizens of Earth - People of Earth - all that kinda sci-fi stuff we learned from Star Trek. But it's obvious we're not ready for that yet, and getting there might be a slow and potentially disastrous process. Reagan liked to talk about a threat from another world (yes, he meant outer space) being the catalyst that finally brings us all together. Hopefully, that will never happen because if it did we'd most likely all be destroyed. What someone should have picked up on, back in them terrible, evil, and cruel, Reagan years, is that there is something threatening the inhabitants of planet Earth - Us. And maybe that's the plan, and maybe I'm gonna sound conspiratorial (which is a term we now use to discredit people,) but everyone with an actual brain in their head knows that since the Industrial Revolution, the human race has been destroying the very habitat it needs in order to stay alive. Even climate change deniers - the big ones, the ones in government who have influence, the ones some people mistakenly believe - even they know what human beings have done and are doing to the environment will eventually make it uninhabitable. They just don't care. Enter the Information Age, the Internet Age, Social Media Shit Storm Age, and we've got trouble on two fronts. 1. The planet itself will no longer be able to sustain human life, and 2. Depression, Anxiety, Apathy - Mental Illness in general, will make it easier for the Powers that Are, to keep control and maybe - bonus! - thin the herd a bit. Maybe quite a bit. Maybe it's by design, and if it's not, it sure is a happy accident for what Richard Dolan called the Breakaway Civilization - the one that none of us belong to (maybe,) and might just pick up and move to the Moon one day...or Mars, who knows? Everything going on right now is unprecedented in human history. Nothing should surprise us.

Taxes. That's it. Taxes.

I feel like global warming is a separate thread.

Though my mentally ill mother believes North Korea and Russia can control the weather and caused the 2017 hurricane season.

The weather is actually controlled in Alaska using the HAARP Project. Real heavy Tesla stuff.

Tesla's still with us?.......... (I know...)

We have an immediate need to start over, to start from scratch, to bust out the big yellow legal pads and start making lists of what works and what doesn't work. The information MUST be gathered from the experiences of the people in the system who need a system. Eliminate the red tape and bureaucracy and let people talk to people. No one gets a number because everyone has a name. Audit the drug companies, question the drugs, question whether it's best to give someone a cure for heroin addiction with a thousand shitty side-effects, or simply give them fucking heroin. Same with all drugs. Legalize everything and see what happens. Guaranteed we'll have less problems.

But, people do need medication. And those who are serious addicts will do whatever it takes to get what they need at times which leads to usually bad behavior / hurting others.

I'm not saying I disagree 100% but legalizing heroin and suggesting letting "people talk to people" (is this something that's not already happening?) - it just sounds like a late night stream of random consciousness.

I'll admit it was late and I was letting my mind wander a bit, but I believe everything I've said here. I'm speaking from personal experience; I've been in the system, deep in the system, in the nut houses and rehabs and detoxes, and at the mercy of "off brand" uses for a variety of shitty, ineffective drugs rich in unpleasant side effects. Legalizing or at least decriminalizing drugs will reduce crime and death releated to drugs, it's a fact that's been proven in places like Portugal and even pars of Canada. And even here in the US, in the midwest somewhere, I forget where, they've got a place where alcoholics can go to get their liquor and drink in a safe environment, without having to wander the streets and annoy people or cause trouble. It works, and if you ask any addict they'll tell you the same. People are talking to "experts" who have little personal experience, people who study surveys and reports, and you can't get an accurate picture treating people like numbers. I understand why it's been done that way, it's more efficient, but it doesn't work.

What people are talking to what experts?

Are you saying people talking to psychiatrists doesn't work?

I'm gonna have to disagree. I think there might be a misunderstanding of addiction here.

And as someone who's put both her parents through rehab before she was able to sip a beer legally, as someone who's also seen homelessness and mental wards and 24-hour suicide watch, I'm also speaking from personal experience.

I think it's important to remember we're not the only ones with personal experiences.

I hear you think the system is not working. I think parts are, but much isn't given the chance due to lack of funding, but im not tryna repeat myself. Lol

IrvingKrebb said:

I'll admit it was late and I was letting my mind wander a bit, but I believe everything I've said here. I'm speaking from personal experience; I've been in the system, deep in the system, in the nut houses and rehabs and detoxes, and at the mercy of "off brand" uses for a variety of shitty, ineffective drugs rich in unpleasant side effects. Legalizing or at least decriminalizing drugs will reduce crime and death releated to drugs, it's a fact that's been proven in places like Portugal and even pars of Canada. And even here in the US, in the midwest somewhere, I forget where, they've got a place where alcoholics can go to get their liquor and drink in a safe environment, without having to wander the streets and annoy people or cause trouble. It works, and if you ask any addict they'll tell you the same. People are talking to "experts" who have little personal experience, people who study surveys and reports, and you can't get an accurate picture treating people like numbers. I understand why it's been done that way, it's more efficient, but it doesn't work.

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How and why would a person get himself entrapped by taking the stuff in the first place while it's ironic that others don't? This has been a question I've been asking myself all the time when topic about drug withdrawal gets on board. It reminds me of a lot of satire in this life. Maybe my question is just useless.

Bohemianne said:

How and why would a person get himself entrapped by taking the stuff in the first place while it's ironic that others don't? This has been a question I've been asking myself all the time when topic about drug withdrawal gets on board. It reminds me of a lot of satire in this life. Maybe my question is just useless.

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Everyone is different. Some people have the mental tools to handle stress. Some don't. Some people have more stress in their lives than others. Many may be mentally ill and self medicating. It's so they can escape the pain or numb themselves usually.

Bohemianne said:

How and why would a person get himself entrapped by taking the stuff in the first place while it's ironic that others don't? This has been a question I've been asking myself all the time when topic about drug withdrawal gets on board. It reminds me of a lot of satire in this life. Maybe my question is just useless.

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No one chooses to become addicted.

The medical community specializing in this sorta thing bases their treatment plans on statistics. As a result, you have a "one size fits all" approach to treating people with mental health and addiction problems. Factor in the drug manufacturers peddling/pushing their products in such a way that even the media is calling unethical, and you have a system that's doing more harm than good. Passing out blood pressure meds and drugs meant to alleviate nerve damage and claiming they treat anxiety should be criminal. Same goes for antihistamines for treating panic attacks. They don't work and the people receiving them know they don't' work, and that's a problem. We're not stupid.

I have personally experienced all this, and you have personally experienced all this, and you're right, we're not the only ones, there are thousands of us out there and we are the people the medical community needs to talk to, not a bunch of numbers under column headings. The stigma needs to be lifted and our voices need to be heard. And not through stupid memes full of new age bullshit, or crying celebrities on Twitter giving us phone numbers to call. We have to call them out and use our experiences to expose the problems and show how ineffective most treatment programs really are. Addiction would be a good place to start. In my neck of the woods, and in many necks, of many woods, across the country I can almost guarantee that most drug and alcohol treatment facilities rely on the 12 step method to treat addicts. AA, NA, GA, all the friggin' As - and there's a shitload. No one's bothered to notice that these are faith based groups that have nothing to getting to the heart of problem. They're tools you can use, if you like, to help you stay sober, but only after you've treated the real problem. Addiction isn't the problem, it's a symptom of a much bigger problem that most of these treatment facilities are not equipped to handle.

I've spent the last year writing about all this, I'm publishing a book, I'm speaking to a local reporter who is young and hungry and eager to call bullshit on what passes for rehab in Connecticut. That's what needs to be done, we need to make our voices heard using whatever means we have available. I like to write, so I write, but something as simple as calling your local paper and explaining your impression of a certain rehab or detox, or loony bin, whatever - reporters like stuff like that, they like exposing bullshit.

I'm not saying you shouldn't see a psychiatrist, in fact, I'd recommend everyone see a psychiatrist if they feel they need to, I see one regularly, and a therapist. And you're right, lack of funding is a huge problem, but maybe if we get loud enough and surly enough, the funds might just appear. If we agree this world is fucked, and simply trying to live in the society we have created is causing a severe outbreak of clinical depression and drug abuse, more than ever before in the history of the US, I'd rather not leave finding a cure in the hands of a bureaucracy. This is something that the people who have suffered, or are still suffering, need to have a say in, and god forbid we take some advice from Portugal or Canada, but we need to do that too. Sorry for the long-ness of this post.

Bohemianne said:

How and why would a person get himself entrapped by taking the stuff in the first place while it's ironic that others don't? This has been a question I've been asking myself all the time when topic about drug withdrawal gets on board. It reminds me of a lot of satire in this life. Maybe my question is just useless.

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It's a very good question. Why do some people become addicted to drugs? I can only answer using my own experiences, and what I have observed being in the company of a whole lot of other addicts. The answer, really, is very simple - I (and I'm guessing most other addicts) no longer wanted to participate in life, in reality, in the world around us. Two things you have to understand about addicts - the first is that their ultimate goal is oblivion. They want to "check out" if you will, divorce themselves from the world around them by activating and abusing the chemicals in their brain that facilitate feeling good, calm, and unafraid. The second, is that most addicts are smart; we are clever people who, unfortunately, have become overly sensitive to the world around us. Try to imagine a brain that works too well, so much so that it becomes a burden, taking in too much information and processing all that information to the Nth degree, focusing, primarily, on any immediate threat to it's survival - past and present. For me, it was a means to forget the past, and not only forget the past, but eliminate the past entirely so my behavior no longer reflected it.

That's sort of a basic answer, and it doesn't even begin to describe the escalation, or a person's "drug of choice," but I believe it begins with the discovery of a means to escape.

chicago said:

Everyone is different. Some people have the mental tools to handle stress. Some don't. Some people have more stress in their lives than others. Many may be mentally ill and self medicating. It's so they can escape the pain or numb themselves usually.

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Chicago is absolutely correct in mentioning "self-medicating" - that's what we're doing. Like I said, most addicts are smart people and in the beginning we believe we can control the substance we're abusing because we know we're smart; we've controlled things in the past, why not this? But brain chemistry and how the brain works is so far beyond our understanding, beyond the understanding even of the people who study the fucking brain, that we fail, and when we fail, we fail spectacularly and tragically.

This article is US specific and I don't know what the stats are in other countries but it shows all states (excluding Nevada) have experienced a rise in suicide rates from 1999 to 2016 of up to 60%.

It's a multi-factor problem and while it affects some people who have been battling depression and other issues for some time, in other cases, suicide can be a more sudden decision which appears to strike without warning.

It then goes onto cover access to lethal means, specifically firearms, which is a more US-specific issue but overall the article touches on a number of subjects mentioned in this thread.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...c-u-s-suicide-rates-have-climbed-dramatically