US suicide rate rises 40% over 17 years, with blue-collar workers at highest risk, CDC finds

Hello,

Are the whole USA in a massive burn out ?

That issue is quite worrying, and sad. I doubt however there is any political will to solve the problem. People which commit suicide tend to arrange political powers, they're people which pay taxes, work, but won't get any retirement.

 

I can see why people give up, there is a lack of hope in the world, economically and in general.

 

I can understand that aswell, I'm a suicide survivor, I'm quite happy to have survived that hell.

 

I suffer from depression, I have never attempted to take my life but I have spells where it's all I can think about. A lot of my negative thoughts stem from the state of the world, how we treat animals, how we treat each other, why some people deserve to have thousands in the bank whilst good people have nothing and can barely afford to eat or clothe their family. I have a severe amount of empathy and it's an albatross around my neck to be honest!

I'm glad you're still here my brother, I really like your posts and I feel like I learn something from you every time.

 

To have suffered from depression, there is two kind of effects :
_ You might hate yourself
_ You might hate the world around you.

When you manage to fight depression, your convictions doesn't change, what you think is unacceptable remain it, yet the feeling it awaken is quite different. Under depression, you only end to feel painfull about the state of the world, yet you don't manage to take actions. When you're not under that, you manage to take more actions. At least It's what I experienced.

It's quite important to not be resign yourself to feel depressive until the world will change. There is possibility to feel better without the world to have changed.

Among the actions that might help to not feel depressive, there is sport, going out into nature,singing, learning to play an instrument, taking distance with the web. I'm still struggling on the last point.
From my personnal experience the web, video games and inactivity tend to cause depression. I stopped dating too and decided to reach happiness alone, the social game around flirting is quite burdening on the mind and I feel much better without that. I got rid of the TV aswell.
By the way food is very important also. I don't have a lot of money so it's quite hard to get all the vegetables I need, but restricting sugar/glucides, and focusing more on green vegetables/fruits help a lot aswell. That require also to cook much more.

Globally, fighting depression force you to be more active than passive. Rather listening music, playing it, rather just watching a serie, reading a book.

Meditation and reading philosophy in a daily way help. I tended to use a lot the enchidrion of Epictetus. Just reading one or two sentences by day is important. For meditation, quantity might be important, but much less regularity, like for reading philosophy.

 

watch your computers, people, watch there settings and software you install, especially high definition audio, video, etc. - these might cause electromagnetic interference within your living space, given wireless technologies which pervade it, for no escape from it all since cell phones have been introduced, and watch your food too, since it has been genetically modified.

 

spot on, not in the existential way, but literally, your comp and your wireless are your voodoo doll... and how do we disarm a voodoo doll?.. right, by pulling the pins out of it... at times, it is useful to completely dismantle your computer - format hdds, pull interconnects, pull dry cell on motherboards, otherwise they still are after you.

 

I completely agree with all that you have said. I try to limit what has a negative effect on me, and as I get older I realise more what causes me to glide downwards. I have found that helping people in your local community or doing something as simple as collecting rubbish from the woods helps me out of a bind.

Feeding your mind and your body good food is vital.

 

We have proof that economic success doesn't keep people from killing themselves.
Americans have abandoned good reasons for hope and placed that hope on the wrong things.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicides_in_the_21st_century

 

The suicide rate among veterans is even higher than among the general population.

Fighting for imperialism, not for your country but for its corporations, can be very depressing.

 

You might want to go do some simple study before you speak.

 

I have.

 

Well, there is a risk that the debate deviate on divorce, but one of the most at-risk population aswell are divorced men. That issue was largely discussed on other threads however.

I suppose aswell that the lower role of religion might play aswell. In Europe, countries very near to the polar circle have very high suicide rate so there might be a role between light/a good mental health.

That's just a personnal feel, but I think that we're living in a very nihilistic era, where things are more and more senseless, and where there is a greater spiritual/philosophical poverty. Even from an esthetic point of view, cities looks more and more just like huge grey areas, of squared shape bottom. Living in a beautifull place is, I think, something necessary to our mental health.

 

Then you'll know that colonialism has nothing to do with it.

 

Is it any surprise since life for the average blue collar working American has only gone down since 1980 as wages,benefits and once earned perks have been taken away.Our rich have gotten richer off the backs of our working class.

 

The change in our economic model and philosophy has disemboweled America and is destroying our once huge middle class. It is seen in our disparity in income and the number of people on some form of welfare even as much of that welfare was done away with in the 90s.

The kind of jobs many do today have to take requires welfare that is a jokejoke

The suicides of the hopeless and addictions is expected when so many people's labor is worthless and makes them poor. Most later generations will never own homes because of the changes that began in the 80s that put us on the path of our economy no longer serving the people of this nation Except for the professional upper middle and upper class. That is a hard fact.

But it is not sustainable and any student of history knows this .

Throw in AI and robotics along with neoliberalism as capitalism cannot provide for much of our population and you got big trouble and all of the right wing ideology dies and looks hateful and stupid .

The majority of our population will not tolerate the treason and I wonder what this nation will look like in 30 years It will not look like it does today for this insanity cannot endure

 

You mean bananas were not always as big as they are now?

 

That is why I live in the forest on 43 acres in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains on a hillside looking out at the valley, which in hick nomenclature is called a hollow.

 

Give them hope and promises of a better life ahead, politicians are very good at that.

 

I'm glad things worked out for you. I tried to pull the trigger but stopped at the last moment. I had lost all hope that I would ever be happy again. I had nothing to look forward to except working myself to death, until death. "Hell" is right. And while I'm not blue collar, I'm sure that is a common feeling among blue-collar workers.

 

With beauty often comes isolation, which can be more damaging than the bustle of the city. I spent 25 years living on a fantastically beautiful piece of property with acreage, in a beautiful area in the NW. Over time, the isolation became oppressive. In a literal sense, paradise slowly became a prison. But that had a lot to do with my marriage. I never intended to live in the middle of nowhere all alone. I don't know and will always wonder what things would have been like had she not turned off the world and decided to live in a shell. But even then, it was such an ordeal to go anywhere that over time you grow to just stay home.

I agree with your basic point that we need beauty in our lives. But we need people too; not to mention the ability to make money. And those needs tend to be mutually exclusive with the yearning for natural beauty.

For me, it came down to be absolutely honest with myself. I truly wanted to die. I couldn't stand the thought of going on the way I was any longer. I had to be brutally honest AND be willing to pay the price. I had to be willing to do whatever it took to get out of the situation that had me holding a gun to my head. But that understanding came over the next few days. What stopped me from pulling the trigger was the thought of having sex with hot women. At my core, that was at least worth living another day. I had never cheated on my wife and the thought had never occurred to me [even though we went ten year with no sex or even any real affection]. I could go to Reno and be having sex with some young hotties in a matter of hours. The next morning I told the ex that I wanted a divorce and planned my trip. That led me down a path to more happiness than I had ever known. And though I lost almost everything, in many ways I am in a far better place today than I ever could have imagined.

Now, when I die, I can do so knowing I have lived.

 

Very gendered issue. Men are about 3/4 of suicides. I have heard that women are 5x as likely to self harm as men who actually do commit suicide. I dunno about how often men attempt. They stick a gun in their mouths but do not pull the trigger, they are in anguish but there is no hospital record. They didn't pull the trigger. And they will not talk to anyone as they've been taught no one cares. I'm a big proponent of further study into ectogenisis (science making it affordable for a man to have children without a woman). Until that happens, other than being set up for exploitation, men are largely socially disenfranchised. Typically with their own tax dollars funding programs that make government a substitute husband. I think our society needs to give men more reason to be socially engaged.

 

BS. The rich have gotten rich by investing intelligently of their own accord.

 

Or stealing from charities... merging companies and reducing employee benefits or staffing... or inheritance... or using private equity firms to liquidate assets while selling them back to the parent company and eventually eliminating thousands of jobs all in the same of profits...

Yeh, BS

 

It's mostly men. Feminists who constantly whine about being victims never complain about that.