1st world suicides

[ToddNotTodd]

http://www.juiceguy.com/ADD-Dr-Baughman-dispells-the-myth.shtml

Did you ever hear that phsycologists/phsychiatrists are the new priests of our era?

They have the power to say who is mentally balanced or imbalanced - just like the priests who had the power to say who was going to hell & who was going to heaven. & of course - what God wants.

Did anyone else read this website? It's hilarious. One of the funniest parody sites I've seen in a long time.

What? It's meant to be serious?

 

[Zen_Woof]

Greetings.

Here are some statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, a USA organization. References can be found here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm

Occurrence

• Suicide took the lives of 30,622 people in 2001 (CDC 2004).
• Suicide rates are generally higher than the national average in the western states and lower in the eastern and midwestern states (CDC 1997).
• In 2002, 132,353 individuals were hospitalized following suicide attempts; 116,639 were treated in emergency departments and released (CDC 2004).
• In 2001, 55% of suicides were committed with a firearm (Anderson and Smith 2003).

Groups At Risk

Males

• Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all U.S. men (Anderson and Smith 2003).
• Males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females (CDC 2004).
• Suicide rates are highest among Whites and second highest among American Indian and Native Alaskan men (CDC 2004).
• Of the 24,672 suicide deaths reported among men in 2001, 60% involved the use of a firearm (Anderson and Smith 2003).

Females

• Women report attempting suicide during their lifetime about three times as often as men (Krug et al. 2002).

Youth

• The overall rate of suicide among youth has declined slowly since 1992 (Lubell, Swahn, Crosby, and Kegler 2004). However, rates remain unacceptably high. Adolescents and young adults often experience stress, confusion, and depression from situations occurring in their families, schools, and communities. Such feelings can overwhelm young people and lead them to consider suicide as a “solution.” Few schools and communities have suicide prevention plans that include screening, referral, and crisis intervention programs for youth.
• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. In 2001, 3,971 suicides were reported in this group (Anderson and Smith 2003).
  Of the total number of suicides among ages 15 to 24 in 2001, 86% (n=3,409) were male and 14% (n=562) were female (Anderson and Smith 2003).
  American Indian and Alaskan Natives have the highest rate of suicide in the 15 to 24 age group (CDC 2004).
• In 2001, firearms were used in 54% of youth suicides (Anderson and Smith 2003).

The Elderly

• Suicide rates increase with age and are very high among those 65 years and older.
• Most elderly suicide victims are seen by their primary care provider a few weeks prior to their suicide attempt and diagnosed with their first episode of mild to moderate depression (DHHS 1999). Older adults who are suicidal are also more likely to be suffering from physical illnesses and be divorced or widowed (DHHS 1999; Carney et al. 1994; Dorpat et al. 1968).
• In 2001, 5,393 Americans over age 65 committed suicide. Of those, 85% (n=4,589) were men and 15% (n=804) were women (CDC 2004).
  Firearms were used in 73% of suicides committed by adults over the age of 65 in 2001 (CDC 2004).

Risk Factors
The first step in preventing suicide is to identify and understand the risk factors. A risk factor is anything that increases the likelihood that persons will harm themselves. However, risk factors are not necessarily causes. Research has identified the following risk factors for suicide (DHHS 1999):

• Previous suicide attempt(s)
• History of mental disorders, particularly depression
• History of alcohol and substance abuse
• Family history of suicide
• Family history of child maltreatment
• Feelings of hopelessness
• Impulsive or aggressive tendencies
• Barriers to accessing mental health treatment
• Loss (relational, social, work, or financial)
• Physical illness
• Easy access to lethal methods
• Unwillingness to seek help because of the stigma attached to mental health and substance abuse disorders or suicidal thoughts
• Cultural and religious beliefs—for instance, the belief that suicide is a noble resolution of a personal dilemma
• Local epidemics of suicide
• Isolation, a feeling of being cut off from other people

Protective Factors

• 
  Protective factors buffer people from the risks associated with suicide. A number of protective factors have been identified (DHHS 1999):
  • Effective clinical care for mental, physical, and substance abuse disorders
  • Easy access to a variety of clinical interventions and support for help seeking
  • Family and community support
  • Support from ongoing medical and mental health care relationships
  • Skills in problem solving, conflict resolution, and nonviolent handling of disputes
  • Cultural and religious beliefs that discourage suicide and support self-preservation instincts

• 
  
  With metta,
  Zenda, who's off to look for First versus Third World stats

 

[Zen_Woof]

Here is an article about suicide in Thailand. Seems the rate is rising there ...

http://english.people.com.cn/200204/25/eng20020425_94706.shtml

With metta,
Zenda

 

[Kris_J]

Did anyone else read this website? It's hilarious. One of the funniest parody sites I've seen in a long time.

What? It's meant to be serious?

So many atheists seeking imperical evidence for the existence of God - & yet will literally swallow what they want from their doctor that their problem is a mere chemical imbalance rather than a by-product of a larger personal issue.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

So many atheists seeking imperical evidence for the existence of God - & yet will literally swallow what they want from their doctor that their problem is a mere chemical imbalance.

What on earth has that got to do with anything? And did you happen to look at my icon?

 

[The Bellman]

So what? If you don't care for the idea that there might not be such a thing as clinical depression primarily caused by a chemical imbalance, then perhaps its time to care about other alternatives?

I've no idea what you're talking about. There IS such a thing as clinical depression primarily caused by a chemical imbalance. Even if there wasn't, what does cancer have to do with it?

Of course, we now have diet pills, nicotine pathces - etc. We really don't need to exercise self control anymore in this consumerist-quick-fix world.

What does this have to do with what we're discussing?

Self pity from losing the loved one grief for your loss as well as their loss.

Self pity is just pity for self. Whatever stigma you choose to attach to the term is up to you. I see self pity as a part of human being human just as pride. Self pity is natural believe it or not.

Self-pity is not related to clinical depression. It's like calling cancer pain 'psychosomatic.'

Oh. Evidence presented by the pharmacutical industry juggernaut? Give me a case study of other animals that commit suicide from a "chemical imbalance in the brain" - you're an analytical guy.

Evidence presented, checked and tested by the medical industry.

As far as I know, no animals commit suicide. Once more, what does that have to do with it?

Of course there is something wrong when a person is depressed. The immediate conclusion that it must be a chemical imbalance is ridiculous.

However, the conclusion that repeated, chronic depression is due to a chemical imbalance, after repeated tests and trials, is perfectly valid.

If a Christian doubts their faith that God exists because their mind tell them but their heart still wants to believe, then they experience grief - my best friend in High school was losing her faith - & her fundamentalist Christian family then claimed she was experiencing depression because her reality was "skewed" ie. losing God & did not toe the line. They made life for her - eventualy, off she went to the mental ward.

That's nice. Completely irrelevant, but nice. I suppose.

So? its a fact to Christians that God exists - & to you they are wrong. So?

It's not a fact "to" them - it's either a fact, or its not. It's a fact that clinical depression is caused by chemical imbalance.

Where is yours? C'mon. Medicine is a science. The beauty of science is that it is necessarily able to be duplicated. Thats why faith healing is not a "science" because they cannot demonstrate it.

I don't have one. That's why I look to the experts - something you don't want to do.

Give me a case study of a scientifically controlled clinical
depression.

Do a google search. There are any number.

Incidentally, there is no "1st world". It's the Old World (Europe, primarily), the New World (the Americas) and the Third world.

 

[Kris_J]

I've no idea what you're talking about. There IS such a thing as clinical depression primarily caused by a chemical imbalance. Even if there wasn't, what does cancer have to do with it? What does this have to do with what we're discussing?

Dude you were the one who brought up clinical depression to be as valid as cancer. BTW - if you aren't trying hard enough to find reasons why people aren't clinically depressed, then you aren't doing anyone any favours.

Go ahead & promote a pill-popping culture - diet pills, nicotine patches, stomach staples. Who needs self control when you can take a pill that will control your behaviour for you. dial 1800 696 500 325 Credit card accepted for all drugs purchased via internet.

Self-pity is not related to clinical depression. It's like calling cancer pain 'psychosomatic.'
Evidence presented, checked and tested by the medical industry.

As far as I know, no animals commit suicide. Once more, what does that have to do with it?

Again, if you value science, you would know value the information that animals do not commit suicide - heck, we do enough tests on animals for a reason.

BTW monkeys gnaw their limbs off given that they are kept in an extremely poor environment. You may argue that they have a chemical imbalance - but you cannot pretend that they are acting out their physiological response to their living condition.

However, the conclusion that repeated, chronic depression is due to a chemical imbalance, after repeated tests and trials, is perfectly valid.

I am not denying that chemical imbalance exists anymore than I deny adrenalin when the person is stimulated. However, adrenalin in our bodies are triggered by our perception of our environment. The same with the chemical imbalance that triggers depression.

That's nice. Completely irrelevant, but nice. I suppose.

What's nice about a budding atheist condemned as clinically depressed by her family & family doctor because she was losing her faith? Her family thought she was having issues because she started staying up til midnight to study psychology .

It's not a fact "to" them - it's either a fact, or its not. It's a fact that clinical depression is caused by chemical imbalance.

Sure, & its a fact that the world was flat. So?

Can you prove that adrenalin is a chemical imbalance? Of course. So do you then say that a person is jogging because they have too much adrenalin hence they jog?

I'd say the jogging came before the adrenalin.

I don't have one. That's why I look to the experts - something you don't want to do.

I have already cited one expert. You have yet to cite one that shows adrenalin comes before the jogging - oops - clinical depression comes before psychological trauma.

Incidentally, there is no "1st world". It's the Old World (Europe, primarily), the New World (the Americas) and the Third world.

You are right there - 1st world refers to capitalist nations/economies. 2nd world were the communist countries. 3rd world was everyone else.

 

[Kris_J]

Here's a shock.

http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Depression/ect/resources/elderly.asp

 

[Arkanin]

Zoot makes a pretty good point at the top of page 2, I think. That said, if depression is more frequent in first world contries, I'm of a mind to think it's a result of something that culture is doing to its inhabitants.

Kris, are you advocating that we should no longer use psychotropic drugs? Frankly, they turned my life around and I have a very good life as-is. I don't know what you are trying to say, but surely you would agree that treating depression as though it is an illness is the way to go given the evidence that supports using medication? Are you denying that our moods (whether we have souls or not) come from chemical reactions in the brain?

 

[Kris_J]

Zoot makes a pretty good point at the top of page 2, I think. That said, if depression is more frequent in first world contries, I'm of a mind to think it's a result of something that culture is doing to its inhabitants.

Kris, are you advocating that we should no longer use psychotropic drugs? Frankly, they turned my life around and I have a very good life as-is. I don't know what you are trying to say, but surely you would agree that treating depression as though it is an illness is the way to go given the evidence that supports using medication? Are you denying that our moods (whether we have souls or not) come from chemical reactions in the brain?

Arkanin, I am not against the use of antidepressants as a solution. However, I do not promote jumping the bandwagon that claims that chemical imbalance is the culprit. There is more at work than a mere chemical imbalance - & by not addressing them means that future generations will think they have a "mental disease" rather than understanding the underlying psycho-sociological issues.

 

[The Bellman]

Go ahead & promote a pill-popping culture - diet pills, nicotine patches, stomach staples. Who needs self control when you can take a pill that will control your behaviour for you. dial 1800 696 500 325 Credit card accepted for all drugs purchased via internet.

You apparently have some problem with what you perceive as a "pill-popping culture" that is preventing you from realising that for some conditions, medication is the only viable treatment. Your loss.

Again, if you value science, you would know value the information that animals do not commit suicide - heck, we do enough tests on animals for a reason.

Your spurious nonsense about animals has nothign to do with science. Hey, no animals watch TV...so I guess we don't do it, either, huh?

I am not denying that chemical imbalance exists anymore than I deny adrenalin when the person is stimulated. However, adrenalin in our bodies are triggered by our perception of our environment. The same with the chemical imbalance that triggers depression.

If there was any evidence whatsoever to support this contention, you'd have something. There isn't. You don't.

What's nice about a budding atheist condemned as clinically depressed by her family & family doctor because she was losing her faith? Her family thought she was having issues because she started staying up til midnight to study psychology

Nothing, but you brought it up, and despite the fact that it was completely irrelevant, I thought it impolite not to make some comment.

Sure, & its a fact that the world was flat.

No, it's not. The world was never flat.

I have already cited one expert. You have yet to cite one that shows adrenalin comes before the jogging - oops - clinical depression comes before psychological trauma.

You haven't cited any experts. You've cited one crank who has not a shred of evidence to support him.

How do you know I haven't any experience with mental illness?

YOu demonstrate it with every post on the subject.

My first experience with mental illness was my best friend in high school when she started questioning the life lead by her fundamentalist Christian family. They complained to me that ever since she went to uni & studied psychology she has changed & started sleeping late (only midnight )& asking "insane" questions about Christianity.

Oops they were my atheist questions she repeated to them.

LOL if I lived in their house sleeping at 3am waking up at 12noon during my uni days, they would thought I was the devil!

Anyhow - her family didn't like the change in her that was happeing & believed she had mental illness. I saw the bruises on her arm cos her mum forced her to see the doctor.

One less potential atheist after all the pills her parents made her take after that.

Another interesting anecdote...that has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue, which is the cause of clinical depression.

Want to hear my 2nd & 3rd experience of mental illness of people close to me?

Depends...are these ones actually relevant?

I can only echo the sentiments of someone in the other thread and hope that nobody close to you ever suffers clinical depression. Ignorant and self-righteous attitudes like yours have done - and continue to do - great harm to those who actually suffer from the illness. Hopefully you will one day learn something about the subject and realise how much harm your attitude can do.

Oh, and in general...it's good tactic to completely ignore the facts that your proposed 'cure' - better relationships - has been tried for decades and doesn't work, and the real cure which you disparage actually works. Just ignoring it prevents you from actually having to deal with the nasty facts that refute your position.

 

[Kornelius]

Ah, clinical depression. My grandmother useto suffer from it and I can tell everybody that it isn't self pity, from what I gathered, it's more like an extreme form of apathy. In my grandmother's case, it was not even that she could not rationalize, she could think that she should be happy and satisfied with her life, but what good are rationalizations if all the things that usually make people happy fail to provide you with any joy. In fact there isn't a single thing in the world you can find joy in.

The fact is that our brain chemistry influences our perception much more than most people would like to admit. Whether you are happy or not has more to do with your body chemistry and metabolism than your wealth and social standing. Heck, by temporarily altering one's brain chemistry with some opiate one can reach absolute bliss no matter how bad off he/she is.

Furthermore it's not like medical science one day, based on nothing, simply declared that clinical depression is caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. We can take blood tests, we can monitor brain activity and correlate that with different substances found in blood and from that we can conclude what effect different chemicals have on the brain. We can also take individual braincells and do experiments on them to see their internal workings and chemistry. It's not like the whole clinical depression thing is not based on empirical science.

 

[Zen_Woof]

Greetings.

See here for a medical opinion written for lay people. http://my.webmd.com/hw/depression/hw30711.asp

I have clinical depression and all I can say is that it took medication to keep me from killing myself and then lots of work at changing my habitual mind patterns and learn what made me depressed. I think, like the endless nature/nurture argument, that it is a mix of chemical imbalance and environmental factors.

I sincerely hope, however, that no one is promoting the "it's all in your head" thing that implies that one is strong enough to overcome it by one's self. Frankly, that isn't helpful to people who are depressed. It's like telling an alcoholic to just stop drinking already ...

With metta,
Zenda

 

[anunbeliever]

Is their a biological test that can assertain the level of chemicals in the brain? ie can clinical depression be diagnosed pathologically or only psychologically?

 

[Zen_Woof]

Greetings.

There is only a screening tool. http://www.med.nyu.edu/psych/screens/depres.html is a good link. It might be interesting for skeptics to take it and see how you score.

With metta,
Zenda

 

[Kris_J]

http://www.victorie-inc.us/neuroscientifically.htm

We all know our lives are stressful - but will sacrifice our mental health to chase the dollar. Thats what these companies thrive on - that we use band-aid solutions to our stress rather than exploring the causes of the stress & how to prevent ourselves from sliding into depression.

Most importantly - we also then do not learn how to teach & protect future generations in coping or alleviating stress without drugs. Generations of pill-popping consumers are ahead if we only consider clinical depression's primarily caused by mere "chemical imbalance" rather than how our lives are structured.

 

[The Bellman]

http://www.victorie-inc.us/neuroscientifically.htm

We all know our lives are stressful - but will sacrifice our mental health to chase the dollar. Thats what these companies thrive on - that we use band-aid solutions to our stress rather than exploring the causes of the stress & how to prevent ourselves from sliding into depression.

Most importantly - we also then do not learn how to teach & protect future generations in coping or alleviating stress without drugs. Generations of pill-popping consumers are ahead if we only consider clinical depression's primarily caused by mere "chemical imbalance" rather than how our lives are structured.

Stress is completely unreleated to clinical depression. It's getting more and more like you don't understand what clinical depression actually is. I suggest you do a bit of research. You will learn that while people are often depressed over certain occurrences, clinical depression is not related to circumstance. It is not caused by poor relationships or anything else similar. It is caused by chemical malfunctions in the brain, and can be successfully treated with medication.

Apart from anything else, this thread and the other both featured several people who have suffered from clinical depression (which you have not) telling you what it is and what cured them. You just want to ignore this and persist with your own preconception. This is poor debating, not science, and harmful.

 

[Kris_J]

Stress is completely unreleated to clinical depression. It's getting more and more like you don't understand what clinical depression actually is. I suggest you do a bit of research. You will learn that while people are often depressed over certain occurrences, clinical depression is not related to circumstance. It is not caused by poor relationships or anything else similar. It is caused by chemical malfunctions in the brain, and can be successfully treated with medication.

Apart from anything else, this thread and the other both featured several people who have suffered from clinical depression (which you have not) telling you what it is and what cured them. You just want to ignore this and persist with your own preconception. This is poor debating, not science, and harmful.

& what you fail to understand is that I do not deny the chemical imbalance of the brain - what my point has been all along is how does the chemical imbalance come about?

Deprive yourself of all your friends/relationships/communication with all humans & animals, tv, games etc. indefinitely & you will find you would have a chemical imbalance. Ride a rollercoaster 24/7 & you willfind you have a chemical imbalance as a result.

Our brain releases adrenalin - a temporary chemical imbalance of the brain - for a reason. Our brain releases morphine - a chemical imbalance of the brain - for a reason. These feel-good chemicals are released causing a "chemical imbalance" to occur to help us during stress.

What makes you think that there is no reason behind why any other type of chemical imbalance such as that causes depression?

 

[Kris_J]

Tell me of anyone or anything that became ill for absolutely no reason. While you're at it tell me of someone ill who got healed for absolutely no reason.

 

[The Bellman]

& what you fail to understand is that I do not deny the chemical imbalance of the brain - what my point has been all along is how does the chemical imbalance come about?

No, I understand that. You posit that the cause of the chemical imbalance is social - poor relationships. However, while it is not known exactly what causes this chemical imbalance, some things about it are known. It is, to some degree, hereditary; its onset is unrelated to an social conditions. That is, it becomes manifest in people in all walks of life, in all social circumstances. Loners, people with supportive friends and family, single people, married people...it manifests itself in all of these circumstances. There is no evidence at all that it is caused by poor relationships, and quite a bit of evidence that it's not.

Deprive yourself of all your friends/relationships/communication with all humans & animals, tv, games etc. indefinitely & you will find you would have a chemical imbalance. Ride a rollercoaster 24/7 & you willfind you have a chemical imbalance as a result.

That is your contention, but it is not evidenced. People who are (in experiments) deprived of the above don't experience clinical depression; people who do experience clinical depression don't have poor relationships or no relationships.

Our brain releases adrenalin - a temporary chemical imbalance of the brain - for a reason. Our brain releases morphine - a chemical imbalance of the brain - for a reason. These feel-good chemicals are released causing a "chemical imbalance" to occur to help us during stress.

What makes you think that there is no reason behind why any other type of chemical imbalance such as that causes depression?

I don't think there is "no reason" behind it. But in likening the depression inducing chemical imbalance to the release of adrenalin, you are completely off the mark. Adrenalin release is the function of a healthy, working body and brain. It's how we are supposed to work. The chemical imbalance which leads to depression isn't. If you have this chemical imbalance, your brain is 'broken' to that extent. Two completely different physiological responses - why would you think they would have the same - or even similar - causes?

Of course, there IS some reason behind why this chemical imbalance manifests itself. We don't know what it is. But, as explained above, we know that it doesn't appear to have anything to do with any social circumstance.

Tell me of anyone or anything that became ill for absolutely no reason. While you're at it tell me of someone ill who got healed for absolutely no reason.

Many people become ill for absolutely no reason (for which read 'for no reason of which we know'). We still don't know what causes cancer; we don't know what brings on the onset of diabetes. Does this mean they actually have no cause? No - it means we don't know what that cause is. Someday, we may know, just as we may know what brings on a serotonin shortage. At the moment, however, all we can go on is what little we do know about what causes them. And one of those things is that a serotonin shortage has no circumstantial cause whatsoever (that we have found).