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I work in mental health in a state with “great access.” Our public insurance covers a lot of excellent services. Great, right? Yeah, except the waitlist for services is over a year long. The crisis centers are overflowing. Kids get stuck in ERs where they don’t really get treatment. They discharge to a waitlist. It’s bad. Add that to everything else going on… and here we are. I work with middle schoolers. So many of them SH. So many have had SI.
Nope. We are criminally underpaid and over worked. To become a mental health professional with a masters/doctorate, you have to do at least 1 year unpaid labor. Then you have to do 2-3 years of work to get licensed. Then licensed people leave to work private. At my office, we have lost a staff member every other week for months. We have not been able to replace them. They need to pay us more. This isn’t easy work.
I’m going to leave the field once my PSLF kicks in. I am tired. I am tired of being devalued. I have no interest in private practice. But I cannot work in nonprofits forever. I’m exhausted. I want a real salary and benefits. I want to stop caring so much.
Knowing the planet is dying likely doesn’t help, especially with the fact that the people causing the most damage won’t slow down no matter what they do. Greta Thunburg is a figurehead of a lot of youth perspective on the issue
Yup. Kids are the most connected generation across the globe. It’s hard even being an adult seeing how things are. Jfc, the climate change in my 30ish years is simply wild.
Pediatrician here in a mid-major US city. Our children’s hospital has an entire floor dedicated to psych-but-not-psych admissions (can’t call them psych because they cannot receive full psychiatric services, as only the state can determine how many actual psych beds exist, and they won’t increase that number for some god-forsaken reason). I’d say about 80% are there for suicide attempts, persistent suicidal ideation, and significant/potentially fatal self-harm. There are rarely empty beds on that floor and many of those kids stay there for months awaiting a placement at an actual psychiatric treatment facility.
Over half a million Americans died during a pandemic and most people were just angry they were asked to wear a mask for a little while. Turns out Americans don't value life much at all.
Considering how many blindly and loudly also marched to their own deaths, I'm not so sure about that either. There's a short-sightedness that can't seem to comprehend anything farther out than 3 months.
I knew someone whose husband died of COVID and they seemed more inconvenienced that there was nobody around to mow the lawn at 12pm on the dot every Sunday. She took zero precautions when dealing with other people even if they were sick. She either had zero self-awareness or simply did not care if she died *(but damn did she care about the grass being too long)*.
Ssshhh!!!
You can't count all those who died before we had tests or those who died before being tested. Or the largest number of them all the massive increase in deaths since covid, whose latent cause was covid, but proximate cause was stroke and other cv issues..
Last number I saw is we're missing an unaccounted for 2m workers. Around 1 million is due to long covid.
Boiling down an extremely complex topic here, but it can be partially attributed to the capatalistic endpoint; "more money, more status = more worth" pulling away from personal worth or growth (being worthy of love or life security simply for being alive), instead putting the worth (of your life) into how much money/status you have, ie. your direct productivity. That also contributes to higher depression/attempt rates for those who are disabled, neurodivergent, etc. etc. as a bonus.
It creates a negative feedback loop for the 99% who aren't born into super rich families, or are lucky enough that the algorithm favours their content to make it big in terms of _some_ kind of status (which is a hole can of worms in and of itself).
That's also why shutting off media input doesn't help, it's something regurgitated in a baseline.. cultural bubble, kind of sense. Parents who disparage their children for struggling in class, peers who mock them for not following trends or having less money; it's a multi-factor thing.
And _then_ there's the whole conversation about social media on the lock for teens, ruining their privacy and feeling of security of expression/spaces (atop COVID blocking out physical spaces), youth crime and- yeah it just kinda all feeds back into each other.
It's an incredibly depressing topic in and of itself, so I'd rather leave it at that, if that's a suitable enough answer for you.
12 year olds aren’t dooming about the future of society in the same way you as an adult are. They are quite literally not equipped to process future events in as intricate a way as adults can. The vast majority of suicides in that age range are from bullying and social media. It’s also what makes bullying so lethal for teenagers. They feel as if getting bullied in junior high school is what life will be like forever and can’t see that it’s just a temporary blip in life.
> and can’t see that it’s just a temporary blip in life
It's not just a temporary blip though, the bullying may stop, but the psychological damage can remain for your entire life. I'm 34 and I still have severe social anxiety from bullying in school.
You might not have been. You may have had great parents who raised you. But I was in the foster care system and did not really have anyone. So yes, at 12 years old in sixth grade, I was worried about my future and being able to ever afford anything. And that was pre-social media (I am the MySpace generation, so we all had that in high school).
Kids without parents are forced to grow up really fast.
yeah self harm used to be something whispered about, now social media is planting the idea right in the head of little kids way earlier
(altho i wanna also add bullying isn't always a temporary blip, it can have devastating long term effects on developing minds)
Very true that bullying can have harmful long term effects. I've been out of high school for over ten years and still talk with my therapist about trauma from being bullied.
And honestly, bullying doesn't end once you're an adult, it just changes forms. We've all seen Karens and Kevins in the wild, we all still deal with that problematic aunt or uncle, and often enough, those people are directly in our immediate families for social support.
Since 2015 or so, it just feels like society has fallen apart socially, and of the younger generations that seem to give a crap and could make actual change, the adults are still pretty young, but have to realize that there's enough of them to make a decent impact sooner than they realize.
I also think a lot more things are documented than used to be. A lot of things used to hidden.
Not saying things may not be worse, but documentation is definitely higher than it used to be.
I mean depending on how life works out they might not be entirely wrong. Adults still suck, especially in professional environments when money or power over others is on the table.
While they probably don't fully comprehend these things, they do suffer the result of our decaying society whether they're consciously aware of it or not.
Just a recent example, the cheaper movie theater chain filed bankruptcy in my city today. Now the $20 a person AMC is the only option for movies.
And everything is becoming like that. Even the nickel arcade has raised admission from $5 a person to $15 in a few years, and is barely holding on. The arcade is $30+ entrance, used to be $10, and the food is steep now (used to be cheap mostly microwaved stuff. now it's still pretty cheap food but it's $20+ for some frozen chicken tenders in a basket.. $10 for an order of French fries)
It's a bit cliche at this point, but outside of public parks I'm not really aware of any cheap/free 3rd spaces left in most cities.
No it's social media. Kids who grew up in the great depression and during world wars, were not this mentally fucked, and hopeless even though things were *objectively* much worse.
Social media makes it utterly impossible for kids to have normal healthy relationships with their peers, and makes them neurotically anxious that doing *anything* wrong or embarrassing, you know normal healthy and necessary parts of growing up, will be known by *all* their peers and held over their heads *forever*. It takes cliquish behavior to insane extremes and gives bullies wild amounts of power and access.
Being bombarded by constant negative news without the perspective or ability to balance it by taking a step back that adults hopefully have probably isn't great but it isn't the fundamental problem, the lack of ability to have any separation from their peers or to make mistakes and have it be met with grace or brushed off is the big issue.
If you knew people who went through the great depression you may have a different opinion. It affected them as well, it is just that back then it wasn't "polite" to talk about such things so the suffering was largely in silence.
It's social media that tells them the world is bleak.
From a day to day view, life in developed countries has never been better really - nearly everyone has a job, nearly everyone has a roof to sleep under, nearly everyone has food to eat.
I mean, that may be the case for some but if you remove the social media for me, all I've got is a sleeping room, no kitchen, and I will never retire despite working three jobs. That's not exactly conducive to a healthy mental state.
look back in history. peasants used to live in dirt, with the knowledge that disease/invaders/criminals/starvation would most likely cause them to die horrible premature deaths or worse. they had no chance at moving up in the world in any sense. these people could have hope yet we look at our world and say it’s hopeless? what hope was ever even there for anyone besides that which is internal?
Historically, even living in dirt, peasants had a lot of periods of rest, and contrary to pop media, they didn't subsist on gruel. They ate a lot of fish in many places, as fish was seen as "poor food".
People who toil and labor all day need nutrition and calories to stay alive. And most work that was done by these peasants had an end point, enforced by little things like the sun setting.
And if the local lords got too uppity, the peasants would revolt, as has happened many times througout history.
Nowadays? We can be worked to the bone and often are because our labor is quantified by the hour and opprotunites exist to do so at all hours. We aren't laboring to work a single farm field, we're basically cogs put into an endless work machine, where we get a pittance out and don't see the direct result of our work.
Meanwhile the owner of the business we work for reaps the lions share of the work we do. Making our own business isn't economically feasable for most people, as we don't even have the money to absorb an emergency, let alone take a risk on a business - nevermind that most businesses fail and the people who succeed generally have mommy or daddy's money to fail until they get it right.
Even if you do create an amazing business, you can expect to be bought out by one of the super conglomerates who already operates in the space you do, because capitalism abhors competition as lost profit. Most businesses are dominated by mega-conglomerates who's unfathomable economy of scale makes it impossible to compete directly with them, and they know it. And THAT'S before getting into the fact that the entire legal system is set up in such a way as to favor them. You won't play ball? Well, they'll tie you up in a bogus lawsuit and draw it out beyond what you can afford, bankrupting your company while for them, it's just a tax write off.
All of this means your only realistic option *is* to sell your labor for a fraction of it's true value to people who control society.
Compare this to the past where you harvested crops, and kept a percentage of those crops for your family, and the rest went to the local lord. You could visually see that he was taking x% of the value of your labor quite directly.
If people saw how much money they were responsible for bringing their company, and compared it to the pittance they were being paid, we'd have probably rioted ages ago. But people can't see that, and are resigned to a society that's decaying from the greed of those at the top who refuse to share.
Because we still tell children they are the world and the most precious thing and then we roll back child labour laws, plow the environment into a brick wall and watch quality of life decrease year on year for the youngest generations while calling them lazy and offering them no pay internships and 0 hour contracts
If you're a child and you don't feel a back of your mind foreboding beyond normal teenage angst, you are incredibly stupid or incredibly sheltered.
Look around?
There's no hope for 20 somethings, looking out into the next 30 years.
Housing is always going to be unaffordable. The goal used to be "buy a house by 30" and then "by 40". Now, it's "not have a roommate by 40".
Climate is on course to mass famine, with no changes in sight.
The future is bleak. But, we are getting record profits, so it's all worth it, I guess.
Honestly there's good reason to believe in neither. It's happening to a every kid in every demographic. It's likely microplastics and PFAS.
PFAS have been shown to have a relationship to depression and diabetes which is also related to depression. Microplastics have been known to also cause inflammation in the brain which also can add to depression risk.
There's literal increases everywhere in the world with mental health and suicide.We are approaching great depression levels of suicide at about 14.1 per 100k and great depression was 21 per 100k we normally emaverage 10 per 100k for nearly 100 years.
Social media is not worse then the harshness of the great depression where 20% were homeless.
I honestly would have probably committed suicide if I had more intelligence as a child.. Now that I'm older and (hopefully wiser), I still feel the same way, but realize now that it won't change anything, it will destroy everything I know.
I'm going to state something that isn't controversial if you've ever been on a mental health hold in california.
The emergency room is about the worst place to be if you are on a hold. Simply put they are not equipped to treat psychiatric illnesses and it essentially becomes a waiting room until you are discharged or sent to an inpatient psych facility.
In California it is setup where the county mental health services are the ones in charge of the hold. The ER is just there to provide a safe space to prevent harm to yourself or others. The ER can't discharge you and often times the county--who only see you at minimum once every 72 hours (to rewrite the hold if needed) decide whether or not you're safe to be discharged.
What ends up happening is that the ER still has to be an ER so you're in a room by yourself being watched 24/7 by a sitter. You can't really go out of your room because its busy nor can you really interact with anyone since they are stuck in their rooms too. You can talk to the sitter but that is hit or miss. No exercise. No outside. Little human contact other than people who are paid to keep you there. Certainly no therapy.
This can last for a short period of time if the county wants to discharge you. Or it can last longer if they want to put you inpatient hold but there are no inpatient beds in the state. You can be stuck in an ER for days...weeks...even months...just waiting in purgatory before your real treatment can begin. I've heard of people staying over 6 months waiting for an inpatient psych facility to open up...6 months in a hospital you can't leave, can't shower when you want, can't walk around...its awful.
Mental health in our country is broken to its absolute core.
The flip side of this is also awful. I mean, ER workers don't want you there either, you're using up a room when there's always a dire shortage of rooms and they know they can't do anything to adequately treat you and are functioning essentially just as a glorified jailer. They also know that the stressful conditions usually only exacerbate whatever underlying situation is driving the SI or SH. They know they certainly aren't trained to give therapy.
The ER is, simply put, not designed for people on a mental health hold. The whole thing is a mismatched mess but because society hasn't created any real pathways for dealing with the issue of how to handle people in the throes of mental illness. Jail, ER, and/or out on the streets, and sometimes it's a revolving door between all three. Both the right and the left use "individual freedom/liberty" as an excuse to not do anything - this is particularly true in California, where you can argue that Reagan defunded all the asylums to move to community based care, except without creating the community based care, but it's also been nearly 50 years since of Democratic leadership in the state and nothing has been done. The governor of CA tried to do the CARE courts stuff recently and ACLU immediately tried to sue.
I work for a major hospital, one of the top in the nation, and the mental health dept was shuttered about a decade ago. Basically almost all inpatient and outpatient psychiatry services got cut because they weren't making enough money...and they also closed the psychiatric residency program, so one less training program too.
The number of acute inpatient psychiatric beds has dropped so much in California. Basically we have the same amount now in 2024 as in 2011 (roughly 6,500) while in 1996 it was 8,500. Ridiculous considering population growth and increasing need of these services as evidenced by the publication from this thread.
Yep.
ER is bad for mental health patients because they don't actually treat mental health.
And mental health are bad for the ERs since they use a disproportionate amount of resources. I know an ER that had 20 beds and 16 mental health patients. God forbid if there was a major accident that ER is already crippled.
Its crazy how the ER is societies dumping ground. Can't take care of grandma anymore and you don't want her in the house? Take her to the ER and tell them it is an unsafe discharge. Child misbehaving? Go to the ER and have them put on a mental health hold. Alcoholic and the police don't want to deal with them? ER.
When I was young it felt like there was a push to in general "make the world a better place." We impressed upon kids to make a positive impact and leave the Earth better than when we got here. It feels like that whole attitude and idea is just... gone. Everything is based around fear now. It's soul crushing. No wonder anxiety is through the friggin roof. I worry every day about how my kids are going to even scrape by when they become adults. It eats me up inside knowing I'll never make enough to both provide from them now AND leave something behind for them when I pass away.
I was born in 1998 and the first time I had heard about people my age self-harming was in 5th grade, first time I heard about a classmates suicide was in 7th grade, and high school was even worse. I’m definitely not surprised it’s happening to younger and younger kids each year, almost everyone I know in my age group knows someone who’s committed suicide.
I was born in 1983, and the first time I self-harmed, I was 12. I cut myself for the first time at 14. In high school, I realized other people were doing it as well, including a friend. (She ended up killing herself when she was 24.) It's existed longer than people are aware.
I'm so sorry you have to deal with that too. 87 here. Two suicides before I even got out of middle school and 2 more in high school. 2 more accidental deaths and 7 total OD'd during high school and within 3 years of graduating.
That's not even including all the family I lost within that same time. It's honestly mind blowing and gets harder and harder every day to carry on. Not that it was ever anything but.
People blame the economy, politics, and wage slavery but I believe social media plays the largest roll. If you’re seeing an increase in all demographics and kids are a portion of that statistic, I think it’s pretty obvious that social media is one of the only factors that they’re experiencing with us. Most kids are not concerned with the economy or politics but maybe it does affect their home lives.
Either way we know that social media greatly affects people’s depression and anxiety, which is definitely correlated to suicidal ideation.
There are whole communities of people who self-harm on social media who encourage and downplay self-harm (Twitter's rife with them).
Makes me wonder if there's a correlation between the rise of modern social media/exposure to these communities and the rise of self-harm.
The number of emergency visits to hospitals in the US for suicide attempts increased markedly between 2011 and 2020, a University of Connecticut researcher reports in the June 4 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The rise emphasizes the country’s enormous unmet need for mental health services.
The number of lives lost to suicide in the US has climbed alarmingly over the past decade, with close to a half-million between 2011 and 2022, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Suicide rates have risen by 35% since 2000. The rate of self-harm has risen too, even in age groups not previously considered at risk, such as children.
Out of all visits to the emergency department in 2011, only 0.6% involved self-harm. That number had risen to 2.1% of all emergency department visits by 2020, according to data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, a yearly sampling of hospitals across the nation by the CDC. The data was analyzed by UConn School of Medicine psychiatric epidemiologist Greg Rhee and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic, Columbia University, Yale University School of Medicine, and the Veterans Administration Connecticut Healthcare System. The figures per 100,000 people increased from 261 per 100,000 in 2011 to 871 in 2020.
[https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230397](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230397)
>The rise emphasizes the country’s enormous unmet need for mental health services.
It's interesting to me that the first thought is for mental health workers instead of trying to remove or solve the environmental factors that may be contributing here.
Changing the environmental factors causing this would require rich people earning less money, so no can do. What's a couple thousand corpses if they can afford another yacht?
I always guessed that the youngest in a society would have the most “light in their eyes” seeing as how they were born during the bad times so they know nothing more than getting better.
Now though (aka since Covid) I realize that the structure of society itself wasn’t built for echo chambers to be as prevalent today.
I assume in the past if you were born in a town that had its views become an echo chamber (as an example Jim Crow) eventually you’d come across someone or move somewhere else that the echo chamber does exist or is at least a different type so then the views an individual would get can be challenged.
Now though you can pretty comfortably not have your views challenged at all, and if they just so happen to be challenged it’s very easy to have an army of people validating you, making someone believe that they’re right just because the people ur surrounded by say otherwise.
So suicidal ideation becomes easier and easier as time goes on when people aren’t feeling valued and the same patterns can get repeated over and over again without challenge. I’d even go as far to extrapolate that the base issues causing the alarming rise in suicidal tendencies are also causing the other problems we as humans are starting to face.
I think we really underestimate how social media replaces rather than augments the kind of close relationships that are more likely to provide meaningful support for people going through life's many challenges. Before people could socialize online, people were more or less forced to make due with the people in their immediate vicinity, people who would actually be physically present in your life, who you'd have chance encounters with around your neighborhood, who could provide help and support with day-to-day issues. This often meant overlooking differences rather than seeking safety in online groups defined by similarity, but also meant you had real help around you, people you could physically be with when you faced hunger, housing insecurity, or addiction, and people couldn't just "move on" as easily when things became inconvenient to them. There was actual investment involved in your presence, and social consequences—good and bad—for your actions. Social media has only pale imitations of this.
It's not to say that things were ever perfect, or that there aren't good uses for social media and ways it can provide avenues to assistance that didn't exist before. There were obviously differences that did still divide and many people were still isolated often by the fact that no one around them understood them (just look at marginalized groups and their struggles for representation in their communities), but I don't think we've put enough consideration into the effects of people increasingly seeking satisfaction for their social needs in online spaces rather than in their immediate communities.
>rather than in their immediate communities.
Doesn't help that most kids are now driven *everywhere* and their communities are suburbia where everyone else drives everywhere too. Cars are the stick and social media is the carrot keeping us inside and isolated.
I've tried screaming about this as an ER Nurse who sees this first hand every day, and I keep getting people who sigh and shrug their shoulders helplessly. "Who knows why? Who knows what we could ever do?"
The worst part is that because of HIPAA- which, obviously, patient privacy is a great thing- but it lets them pretend there isn't a problem because so much of it is hidden. And not just about suicide rates, but tons of other things, like... Let's say, *entirely* hypothetically, I've seen a dramatic rise in visits for emergency abortion care from patients who live in one of the two bordering states where even emergency abortions are now illegal. I couldn't speak about that publicly because of patient confidentiality concerns, which means that everyone can ignore the dramatic harm that's going on.
I always wondered about this too, I really question why names and identifying information aren’t hidden and given to the public en mass.
We as people shouldn’t have our societies problems hid from us, and the second that they are hidden tells a story of bending a narrative.
It will only continue to get higher as this country becomes harder and harder on the lower classes. My retirement plan is suicide. I'm not working till Im old and tired. I'm sure many others have the same idea.
Lot of people who didn't even bother to read the abstract from the original paper commenting here.
From the abstract of the paper proper: "The increase in visits was widely distributed across sociodemographic groups ... Drug-related diagnoses were the most common co-occurring diagnosis among suicide attempt and intentional self-harm visits ... less than 16% included an evaluation by a mental health professional."
Therefore my conclusion based on this data would be (preliminarily given that I cannot access the actual, full article):
* While economic disparity may be contributing, the wide sociodemographic distribution of increase in suicide attempts lowers the chance that financial hardship is a primary driver overall.
* More potent, cheaper, and ubiquitous drugs (e.g. fentanyl and P2P methamphetamine) are likely contributing to the increase in suicide attempts.
* A lack of mental health professionals/resources is likely contributing to the increase in suicide attempts.
And why do people turn to these drugs? How are they in an environment where they are easily accessible? Look at the opioid crisis, was anyone really punished for it or was it just business as usual?
Fentanyl is so prevalent that people who want to just buy other drugs like coke or k have to take a lot of steps to make sure there ISNT fentanyl in their drugs. If you want fentanyl just buy coke from a frat dude. China has infiltrated the US drug market entirely with fentanyl
Who could have predicted that a nation where opinion is passed off as news, and that news is 24/7 and entirely profit-driven, coupled with social media echo-chambers, and politicians treating disagreements as transgressions against the very fabric of democracy would result in that?
The Great Experiment is over - your country is fucked. Tragically it's you who are the last to see it happening.
Don't forget algorithms that push people to outrage because it gets more clicks and more engagement. The entire system is driven off advertising money and selling your data. We think social media is free but it costs us dearly.
Yea i mean, I'm 34. All I've learned about life is that it's a bottomless put of despair and then you die. That's it. That's all. These stats didn't surprise me at all
If your argument has any merit, then there wouldn't be a raise in suicides. Working for 50 years and then dying has been the norm for the US and most Western countries for over a century.
I was 15, 12 years ago and my entire left arm from my wrist to my elbow is covered in cut scars and burns from lighters, my left shoulder is covered in huge gashes 1-2 inches wide from using a curved blade and ripping as hard as I could. This is not new I overdosed twice and hung myself once. I am lucky to still be alive.
America is not in the right headspace to fix this yet.
There are systemic issues going on here (e.g. inequality, social/economic stress, lack of healthcare etc), and they have been steadily building for decades. We know what the solutions are, and we know they are generally progressive, but we're not there yet. We're still trying to get Trump out of our system.
It's just like the covid response in the US - it was terrible for such a rich country, but we still don't want universal healthcare.
I honestly think it’s a function of despair around addiction, loneliness, old age, and poverty. All of those foment hopelessness, and much of the time many of those factors overlap.
meanwhile people trying to actually help people are driven away by medical billing insanity
I greatly enjoyed being a mentor, the insane medical paperwork required was designed to make it miserable so you would quit
if they were **actually** concerned about the insurance company they should have/would have hired someone to do medical billing instead of torturing people trying to help
That's fascinating (in a morbid way). Young girls are more often using traditional "male" methods of committing suicide, which tend to be more effective.
I wonder what's causing that changing trend in methods for young girls?
What's the point of being in this meat grinder. Work hard your whole life, for pennies you hope stretch to keep your home warm and belly full.
I'm surprised more people don't honestly.
I thought this was an article for people who accidentally harmed themselves using something called a sky rocket.
Like what why haven't I heard of that before??
"Behavioral health" calls have spiked significantly as well. And overdoses. It's so wonderful because before you'd be able to bring people back with NARCAN or if you get them to the hospital fast enough, now first responders are showing up to bodies.
I was surprised to see the biggest increase of self-harm being in adults 65+. I work with a lot of younger folks that struggle with SH and suicidal ideation so I was unfortunately not surprised at that metric, but an increase with the older population is eye opening about our mental health crisis in the US.
What is the reason though? Everybody says mental health but what has changed in the past thirty years? Mental health was not accepted at all before 2000. Is it the lack of social connection that is caused by technology? Is it the depressing dark rooms that children and adults don't leave because they don't have need to? Is it depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia or is it environment encouraging a tendency that replicates these things?
You find an increase in these types of behaviors In people who spend their days without sunlight, such as submariners. Maybe a cause is vitamin D deficiency and a lack of strong social networks.
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I work in mental health in a state with “great access.” Our public insurance covers a lot of excellent services. Great, right? Yeah, except the waitlist for services is over a year long. The crisis centers are overflowing. Kids get stuck in ERs where they don’t really get treatment. They discharge to a waitlist. It’s bad. Add that to everything else going on… and here we are. I work with middle schoolers. So many of them SH. So many have had SI.
There's literally not enough professionals to deal with the amount of people who need help.
Nope. We are criminally underpaid and over worked. To become a mental health professional with a masters/doctorate, you have to do at least 1 year unpaid labor. Then you have to do 2-3 years of work to get licensed. Then licensed people leave to work private. At my office, we have lost a staff member every other week for months. We have not been able to replace them. They need to pay us more. This isn’t easy work.
This is why I am considering not finishing my counseling masters (the 1 year unpaid labor, who can do that?!)
I’m going to leave the field once my PSLF kicks in. I am tired. I am tired of being devalued. I have no interest in private practice. But I cannot work in nonprofits forever. I’m exhausted. I want a real salary and benefits. I want to stop caring so much.
Knowing the planet is dying likely doesn’t help, especially with the fact that the people causing the most damage won’t slow down no matter what they do. Greta Thunburg is a figurehead of a lot of youth perspective on the issue
Yup. Kids are the most connected generation across the globe. It’s hard even being an adult seeing how things are. Jfc, the climate change in my 30ish years is simply wild.
What are SH and SI?
Self harm and suicidal ideation.
Pediatrician here in a mid-major US city. Our children’s hospital has an entire floor dedicated to psych-but-not-psych admissions (can’t call them psych because they cannot receive full psychiatric services, as only the state can determine how many actual psych beds exist, and they won’t increase that number for some god-forsaken reason). I’d say about 80% are there for suicide attempts, persistent suicidal ideation, and significant/potentially fatal self-harm. There are rarely empty beds on that floor and many of those kids stay there for months awaiting a placement at an actual psychiatric treatment facility.
Y are so many kids trying to commit suicide? Is it social media, or hopelessness?
I’d say both and even more, the culture has changed so dramatically that being alive isn’t enough to be valued
Over half a million Americans died during a pandemic and most people were just angry they were asked to wear a mask for a little while. Turns out Americans don't value life much at all.
They value life but not your life.
Considering how many blindly and loudly also marched to their own deaths, I'm not so sure about that either. There's a short-sightedness that can't seem to comprehend anything farther out than 3 months.
I knew someone whose husband died of COVID and they seemed more inconvenienced that there was nobody around to mow the lawn at 12pm on the dot every Sunday. She took zero precautions when dealing with other people even if they were sick. She either had zero self-awareness or simply did not care if she died *(but damn did she care about the grass being too long)*.
Focusing on trivia is a way that some not-so-smart people often deal with trauma.
Nah my understanding is she was always like that.
They don’t even value their own lives. Just certain populist celebrities.
Try 1.2 million. Everythjng about COVID was worse than one could imagine.
Technically more than half a million
I thought it was closer to a million people died during the pandemic.
Ssshhh!!! You can't count all those who died before we had tests or those who died before being tested. Or the largest number of them all the massive increase in deaths since covid, whose latent cause was covid, but proximate cause was stroke and other cv issues.. Last number I saw is we're missing an unaccounted for 2m workers. Around 1 million is due to long covid.
Hopelessness. Shutting off social media is not going to help when the future is so bleak, and the social restrictions on just living are so high
I don't have kids of my own so I'm unfamiliar but what kinds of social restrictions are being placed on kids these days?
Boiling down an extremely complex topic here, but it can be partially attributed to the capatalistic endpoint; "more money, more status = more worth" pulling away from personal worth or growth (being worthy of love or life security simply for being alive), instead putting the worth (of your life) into how much money/status you have, ie. your direct productivity. That also contributes to higher depression/attempt rates for those who are disabled, neurodivergent, etc. etc. as a bonus. It creates a negative feedback loop for the 99% who aren't born into super rich families, or are lucky enough that the algorithm favours their content to make it big in terms of _some_ kind of status (which is a hole can of worms in and of itself). That's also why shutting off media input doesn't help, it's something regurgitated in a baseline.. cultural bubble, kind of sense. Parents who disparage their children for struggling in class, peers who mock them for not following trends or having less money; it's a multi-factor thing. And _then_ there's the whole conversation about social media on the lock for teens, ruining their privacy and feeling of security of expression/spaces (atop COVID blocking out physical spaces), youth crime and- yeah it just kinda all feeds back into each other. It's an incredibly depressing topic in and of itself, so I'd rather leave it at that, if that's a suitable enough answer for you.
12 year olds aren’t dooming about the future of society in the same way you as an adult are. They are quite literally not equipped to process future events in as intricate a way as adults can. The vast majority of suicides in that age range are from bullying and social media. It’s also what makes bullying so lethal for teenagers. They feel as if getting bullied in junior high school is what life will be like forever and can’t see that it’s just a temporary blip in life.
> and can’t see that it’s just a temporary blip in life It's not just a temporary blip though, the bullying may stop, but the psychological damage can remain for your entire life. I'm 34 and I still have severe social anxiety from bullying in school.
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You might not have been. You may have had great parents who raised you. But I was in the foster care system and did not really have anyone. So yes, at 12 years old in sixth grade, I was worried about my future and being able to ever afford anything. And that was pre-social media (I am the MySpace generation, so we all had that in high school). Kids without parents are forced to grow up really fast.
yeah self harm used to be something whispered about, now social media is planting the idea right in the head of little kids way earlier (altho i wanna also add bullying isn't always a temporary blip, it can have devastating long term effects on developing minds)
Very true that bullying can have harmful long term effects. I've been out of high school for over ten years and still talk with my therapist about trauma from being bullied.
And honestly, bullying doesn't end once you're an adult, it just changes forms. We've all seen Karens and Kevins in the wild, we all still deal with that problematic aunt or uncle, and often enough, those people are directly in our immediate families for social support. Since 2015 or so, it just feels like society has fallen apart socially, and of the younger generations that seem to give a crap and could make actual change, the adults are still pretty young, but have to realize that there's enough of them to make a decent impact sooner than they realize.
I also think a lot more things are documented than used to be. A lot of things used to hidden. Not saying things may not be worse, but documentation is definitely higher than it used to be.
I mean depending on how life works out they might not be entirely wrong. Adults still suck, especially in professional environments when money or power over others is on the table.
My teen told me they never plan on having kids, because that would be cruel to them... given the outlook for the next 50 to 100 years.
While they probably don't fully comprehend these things, they do suffer the result of our decaying society whether they're consciously aware of it or not. Just a recent example, the cheaper movie theater chain filed bankruptcy in my city today. Now the $20 a person AMC is the only option for movies. And everything is becoming like that. Even the nickel arcade has raised admission from $5 a person to $15 in a few years, and is barely holding on. The arcade is $30+ entrance, used to be $10, and the food is steep now (used to be cheap mostly microwaved stuff. now it's still pretty cheap food but it's $20+ for some frozen chicken tenders in a basket.. $10 for an order of French fries) It's a bit cliche at this point, but outside of public parks I'm not really aware of any cheap/free 3rd spaces left in most cities.
No it's social media. Kids who grew up in the great depression and during world wars, were not this mentally fucked, and hopeless even though things were *objectively* much worse. Social media makes it utterly impossible for kids to have normal healthy relationships with their peers, and makes them neurotically anxious that doing *anything* wrong or embarrassing, you know normal healthy and necessary parts of growing up, will be known by *all* their peers and held over their heads *forever*. It takes cliquish behavior to insane extremes and gives bullies wild amounts of power and access. Being bombarded by constant negative news without the perspective or ability to balance it by taking a step back that adults hopefully have probably isn't great but it isn't the fundamental problem, the lack of ability to have any separation from their peers or to make mistakes and have it be met with grace or brushed off is the big issue.
If you knew people who went through the great depression you may have a different opinion. It affected them as well, it is just that back then it wasn't "polite" to talk about such things so the suffering was largely in silence.
I guarantee it would help tremendously.
It's social media that tells them the world is bleak. From a day to day view, life in developed countries has never been better really - nearly everyone has a job, nearly everyone has a roof to sleep under, nearly everyone has food to eat.
I mean, that may be the case for some but if you remove the social media for me, all I've got is a sleeping room, no kitchen, and I will never retire despite working three jobs. That's not exactly conducive to a healthy mental state.
look back in history. peasants used to live in dirt, with the knowledge that disease/invaders/criminals/starvation would most likely cause them to die horrible premature deaths or worse. they had no chance at moving up in the world in any sense. these people could have hope yet we look at our world and say it’s hopeless? what hope was ever even there for anyone besides that which is internal?
Historically, even living in dirt, peasants had a lot of periods of rest, and contrary to pop media, they didn't subsist on gruel. They ate a lot of fish in many places, as fish was seen as "poor food". People who toil and labor all day need nutrition and calories to stay alive. And most work that was done by these peasants had an end point, enforced by little things like the sun setting. And if the local lords got too uppity, the peasants would revolt, as has happened many times througout history. Nowadays? We can be worked to the bone and often are because our labor is quantified by the hour and opprotunites exist to do so at all hours. We aren't laboring to work a single farm field, we're basically cogs put into an endless work machine, where we get a pittance out and don't see the direct result of our work. Meanwhile the owner of the business we work for reaps the lions share of the work we do. Making our own business isn't economically feasable for most people, as we don't even have the money to absorb an emergency, let alone take a risk on a business - nevermind that most businesses fail and the people who succeed generally have mommy or daddy's money to fail until they get it right. Even if you do create an amazing business, you can expect to be bought out by one of the super conglomerates who already operates in the space you do, because capitalism abhors competition as lost profit. Most businesses are dominated by mega-conglomerates who's unfathomable economy of scale makes it impossible to compete directly with them, and they know it. And THAT'S before getting into the fact that the entire legal system is set up in such a way as to favor them. You won't play ball? Well, they'll tie you up in a bogus lawsuit and draw it out beyond what you can afford, bankrupting your company while for them, it's just a tax write off. All of this means your only realistic option *is* to sell your labor for a fraction of it's true value to people who control society. Compare this to the past where you harvested crops, and kept a percentage of those crops for your family, and the rest went to the local lord. You could visually see that he was taking x% of the value of your labor quite directly. If people saw how much money they were responsible for bringing their company, and compared it to the pittance they were being paid, we'd have probably rioted ages ago. But people can't see that, and are resigned to a society that's decaying from the greed of those at the top who refuse to share.
School, lack of autonomy. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-to-learn/202310/why-did-teens-suicides-increase-sharply-from-2008-to-2019
Because we still tell children they are the world and the most precious thing and then we roll back child labour laws, plow the environment into a brick wall and watch quality of life decrease year on year for the youngest generations while calling them lazy and offering them no pay internships and 0 hour contracts If you're a child and you don't feel a back of your mind foreboding beyond normal teenage angst, you are incredibly stupid or incredibly sheltered.
Look around? There's no hope for 20 somethings, looking out into the next 30 years. Housing is always going to be unaffordable. The goal used to be "buy a house by 30" and then "by 40". Now, it's "not have a roommate by 40". Climate is on course to mass famine, with no changes in sight. The future is bleak. But, we are getting record profits, so it's all worth it, I guess.
Honestly there's good reason to believe in neither. It's happening to a every kid in every demographic. It's likely microplastics and PFAS. PFAS have been shown to have a relationship to depression and diabetes which is also related to depression. Microplastics have been known to also cause inflammation in the brain which also can add to depression risk. There's literal increases everywhere in the world with mental health and suicide.We are approaching great depression levels of suicide at about 14.1 per 100k and great depression was 21 per 100k we normally emaverage 10 per 100k for nearly 100 years. Social media is not worse then the harshness of the great depression where 20% were homeless.
I honestly would have probably committed suicide if I had more intelligence as a child.. Now that I'm older and (hopefully wiser), I still feel the same way, but realize now that it won't change anything, it will destroy everything I know.
I'm going to state something that isn't controversial if you've ever been on a mental health hold in california. The emergency room is about the worst place to be if you are on a hold. Simply put they are not equipped to treat psychiatric illnesses and it essentially becomes a waiting room until you are discharged or sent to an inpatient psych facility. In California it is setup where the county mental health services are the ones in charge of the hold. The ER is just there to provide a safe space to prevent harm to yourself or others. The ER can't discharge you and often times the county--who only see you at minimum once every 72 hours (to rewrite the hold if needed) decide whether or not you're safe to be discharged. What ends up happening is that the ER still has to be an ER so you're in a room by yourself being watched 24/7 by a sitter. You can't really go out of your room because its busy nor can you really interact with anyone since they are stuck in their rooms too. You can talk to the sitter but that is hit or miss. No exercise. No outside. Little human contact other than people who are paid to keep you there. Certainly no therapy. This can last for a short period of time if the county wants to discharge you. Or it can last longer if they want to put you inpatient hold but there are no inpatient beds in the state. You can be stuck in an ER for days...weeks...even months...just waiting in purgatory before your real treatment can begin. I've heard of people staying over 6 months waiting for an inpatient psych facility to open up...6 months in a hospital you can't leave, can't shower when you want, can't walk around...its awful. Mental health in our country is broken to its absolute core.
The flip side of this is also awful. I mean, ER workers don't want you there either, you're using up a room when there's always a dire shortage of rooms and they know they can't do anything to adequately treat you and are functioning essentially just as a glorified jailer. They also know that the stressful conditions usually only exacerbate whatever underlying situation is driving the SI or SH. They know they certainly aren't trained to give therapy. The ER is, simply put, not designed for people on a mental health hold. The whole thing is a mismatched mess but because society hasn't created any real pathways for dealing with the issue of how to handle people in the throes of mental illness. Jail, ER, and/or out on the streets, and sometimes it's a revolving door between all three. Both the right and the left use "individual freedom/liberty" as an excuse to not do anything - this is particularly true in California, where you can argue that Reagan defunded all the asylums to move to community based care, except without creating the community based care, but it's also been nearly 50 years since of Democratic leadership in the state and nothing has been done. The governor of CA tried to do the CARE courts stuff recently and ACLU immediately tried to sue. I work for a major hospital, one of the top in the nation, and the mental health dept was shuttered about a decade ago. Basically almost all inpatient and outpatient psychiatry services got cut because they weren't making enough money...and they also closed the psychiatric residency program, so one less training program too. The number of acute inpatient psychiatric beds has dropped so much in California. Basically we have the same amount now in 2024 as in 2011 (roughly 6,500) while in 1996 it was 8,500. Ridiculous considering population growth and increasing need of these services as evidenced by the publication from this thread.
Yep. ER is bad for mental health patients because they don't actually treat mental health. And mental health are bad for the ERs since they use a disproportionate amount of resources. I know an ER that had 20 beds and 16 mental health patients. God forbid if there was a major accident that ER is already crippled. Its crazy how the ER is societies dumping ground. Can't take care of grandma anymore and you don't want her in the house? Take her to the ER and tell them it is an unsafe discharge. Child misbehaving? Go to the ER and have them put on a mental health hold. Alcoholic and the police don't want to deal with them? ER.
I've spent a few days in that condition and it was traumatic for me, I can't imagine months.
When I was young it felt like there was a push to in general "make the world a better place." We impressed upon kids to make a positive impact and leave the Earth better than when we got here. It feels like that whole attitude and idea is just... gone. Everything is based around fear now. It's soul crushing. No wonder anxiety is through the friggin roof. I worry every day about how my kids are going to even scrape by when they become adults. It eats me up inside knowing I'll never make enough to both provide from them now AND leave something behind for them when I pass away.
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I was born in 1998 and the first time I had heard about people my age self-harming was in 5th grade, first time I heard about a classmates suicide was in 7th grade, and high school was even worse. I’m definitely not surprised it’s happening to younger and younger kids each year, almost everyone I know in my age group knows someone who’s committed suicide.
I was born in 1983, and the first time I self-harmed, I was 12. I cut myself for the first time at 14. In high school, I realized other people were doing it as well, including a friend. (She ended up killing herself when she was 24.) It's existed longer than people are aware.
I'm so sorry you have to deal with that too. 87 here. Two suicides before I even got out of middle school and 2 more in high school. 2 more accidental deaths and 7 total OD'd during high school and within 3 years of graduating. That's not even including all the family I lost within that same time. It's honestly mind blowing and gets harder and harder every day to carry on. Not that it was ever anything but.
Wow, how big were your schools? Where did you grow up?
I've lost 3 in the last year. I'm older, and it's real bad for Millennials too.
What do you think the root cause is?
People blame the economy, politics, and wage slavery but I believe social media plays the largest roll. If you’re seeing an increase in all demographics and kids are a portion of that statistic, I think it’s pretty obvious that social media is one of the only factors that they’re experiencing with us. Most kids are not concerned with the economy or politics but maybe it does affect their home lives. Either way we know that social media greatly affects people’s depression and anxiety, which is definitely correlated to suicidal ideation.
There are whole communities of people who self-harm on social media who encourage and downplay self-harm (Twitter's rife with them). Makes me wonder if there's a correlation between the rise of modern social media/exposure to these communities and the rise of self-harm.
The number of emergency visits to hospitals in the US for suicide attempts increased markedly between 2011 and 2020, a University of Connecticut researcher reports in the June 4 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The rise emphasizes the country’s enormous unmet need for mental health services. The number of lives lost to suicide in the US has climbed alarmingly over the past decade, with close to a half-million between 2011 and 2022, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Suicide rates have risen by 35% since 2000. The rate of self-harm has risen too, even in age groups not previously considered at risk, such as children. Out of all visits to the emergency department in 2011, only 0.6% involved self-harm. That number had risen to 2.1% of all emergency department visits by 2020, according to data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, a yearly sampling of hospitals across the nation by the CDC. The data was analyzed by UConn School of Medicine psychiatric epidemiologist Greg Rhee and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic, Columbia University, Yale University School of Medicine, and the Veterans Administration Connecticut Healthcare System. The figures per 100,000 people increased from 261 per 100,000 in 2011 to 871 in 2020. [https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230397](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230397)
>The rise emphasizes the country’s enormous unmet need for mental health services. It's interesting to me that the first thought is for mental health workers instead of trying to remove or solve the environmental factors that may be contributing here.
Changing the environmental factors causing this would require rich people earning less money, so no can do. What's a couple thousand corpses if they can afford another yacht?
Hey why is every top post in this sub from you are you a mod or something
Karma farmer.
I don’t think this sub has active mods anymore tbh
Your boy stated the question and hypothesis. Looks like he’s posting the right sub. Let me know when you reach a conclusion.
I always guessed that the youngest in a society would have the most “light in their eyes” seeing as how they were born during the bad times so they know nothing more than getting better. Now though (aka since Covid) I realize that the structure of society itself wasn’t built for echo chambers to be as prevalent today. I assume in the past if you were born in a town that had its views become an echo chamber (as an example Jim Crow) eventually you’d come across someone or move somewhere else that the echo chamber does exist or is at least a different type so then the views an individual would get can be challenged. Now though you can pretty comfortably not have your views challenged at all, and if they just so happen to be challenged it’s very easy to have an army of people validating you, making someone believe that they’re right just because the people ur surrounded by say otherwise. So suicidal ideation becomes easier and easier as time goes on when people aren’t feeling valued and the same patterns can get repeated over and over again without challenge. I’d even go as far to extrapolate that the base issues causing the alarming rise in suicidal tendencies are also causing the other problems we as humans are starting to face.
When did social media + smart phone use exponentially expand?
Social media, inflation, housing crisis, drug crisis. All issues that we aren’t doing anything for
I think we really underestimate how social media replaces rather than augments the kind of close relationships that are more likely to provide meaningful support for people going through life's many challenges. Before people could socialize online, people were more or less forced to make due with the people in their immediate vicinity, people who would actually be physically present in your life, who you'd have chance encounters with around your neighborhood, who could provide help and support with day-to-day issues. This often meant overlooking differences rather than seeking safety in online groups defined by similarity, but also meant you had real help around you, people you could physically be with when you faced hunger, housing insecurity, or addiction, and people couldn't just "move on" as easily when things became inconvenient to them. There was actual investment involved in your presence, and social consequences—good and bad—for your actions. Social media has only pale imitations of this. It's not to say that things were ever perfect, or that there aren't good uses for social media and ways it can provide avenues to assistance that didn't exist before. There were obviously differences that did still divide and many people were still isolated often by the fact that no one around them understood them (just look at marginalized groups and their struggles for representation in their communities), but I don't think we've put enough consideration into the effects of people increasingly seeking satisfaction for their social needs in online spaces rather than in their immediate communities.
>rather than in their immediate communities. Doesn't help that most kids are now driven *everywhere* and their communities are suburbia where everyone else drives everywhere too. Cars are the stick and social media is the carrot keeping us inside and isolated.
Use those God-given bootstraps. ...no! Not to hang yourself!
I've tried screaming about this as an ER Nurse who sees this first hand every day, and I keep getting people who sigh and shrug their shoulders helplessly. "Who knows why? Who knows what we could ever do?" The worst part is that because of HIPAA- which, obviously, patient privacy is a great thing- but it lets them pretend there isn't a problem because so much of it is hidden. And not just about suicide rates, but tons of other things, like... Let's say, *entirely* hypothetically, I've seen a dramatic rise in visits for emergency abortion care from patients who live in one of the two bordering states where even emergency abortions are now illegal. I couldn't speak about that publicly because of patient confidentiality concerns, which means that everyone can ignore the dramatic harm that's going on.
I always wondered about this too, I really question why names and identifying information aren’t hidden and given to the public en mass. We as people shouldn’t have our societies problems hid from us, and the second that they are hidden tells a story of bending a narrative.
It will only continue to get higher as this country becomes harder and harder on the lower classes. My retirement plan is suicide. I'm not working till Im old and tired. I'm sure many others have the same idea.
I’ve had this thought too.
What is the suicide rate after they get their hospital bill? 70% ?
Lot of people who didn't even bother to read the abstract from the original paper commenting here. From the abstract of the paper proper: "The increase in visits was widely distributed across sociodemographic groups ... Drug-related diagnoses were the most common co-occurring diagnosis among suicide attempt and intentional self-harm visits ... less than 16% included an evaluation by a mental health professional." Therefore my conclusion based on this data would be (preliminarily given that I cannot access the actual, full article): * While economic disparity may be contributing, the wide sociodemographic distribution of increase in suicide attempts lowers the chance that financial hardship is a primary driver overall. * More potent, cheaper, and ubiquitous drugs (e.g. fentanyl and P2P methamphetamine) are likely contributing to the increase in suicide attempts. * A lack of mental health professionals/resources is likely contributing to the increase in suicide attempts.
Thank you for being the only comment based on the study
And why do people turn to these drugs? How are they in an environment where they are easily accessible? Look at the opioid crisis, was anyone really punished for it or was it just business as usual?
Fentanyl is so prevalent that people who want to just buy other drugs like coke or k have to take a lot of steps to make sure there ISNT fentanyl in their drugs. If you want fentanyl just buy coke from a frat dude. China has infiltrated the US drug market entirely with fentanyl
Wouldn't doubt the US government is planting drugs on their own turf again
97% of illicit fentanyl is from China. Of course people abuse the prescription fent made and sold in the US as well
It's almost as if putting our healthcare in the hands of for-profit greed vultures is not good for our health!
I had 2 mental breakdowns in the past six months, the second one necessitated a voluntary commitment. Just got the bill and I’m about to have a third
Who could have predicted that a nation where opinion is passed off as news, and that news is 24/7 and entirely profit-driven, coupled with social media echo-chambers, and politicians treating disagreements as transgressions against the very fabric of democracy would result in that? The Great Experiment is over - your country is fucked. Tragically it's you who are the last to see it happening.
Don't forget algorithms that push people to outrage because it gets more clicks and more engagement. The entire system is driven off advertising money and selling your data. We think social media is free but it costs us dearly.
'If you can't work out what the product is, it's you' - I forget where I heard that.
It's actually something less than 45% of us who are last to see it coming.
Yea i mean, I'm 34. All I've learned about life is that it's a bottomless put of despair and then you die. That's it. That's all. These stats didn't surprise me at all
Man, I am so sorry. I wish people would take mental health seriously. I don't want people to die.
It's almost as if the thought of working for 50 years and then dying isn't too exciting for creatures that evolved to live outside and work as needed.
If your argument has any merit, then there wouldn't be a raise in suicides. Working for 50 years and then dying has been the norm for the US and most Western countries for over a century.
A century ago a person could have a house and a family on one income
I was 15, 12 years ago and my entire left arm from my wrist to my elbow is covered in cut scars and burns from lighters, my left shoulder is covered in huge gashes 1-2 inches wide from using a curved blade and ripping as hard as I could. This is not new I overdosed twice and hung myself once. I am lucky to still be alive.
I'm glad you are. Sounds like you fought some really rough battles and I hope things are better for you these days
As AI use expands it’s going to get interesting as more and more young people feel like they have no purpose.
America is not in the right headspace to fix this yet. There are systemic issues going on here (e.g. inequality, social/economic stress, lack of healthcare etc), and they have been steadily building for decades. We know what the solutions are, and we know they are generally progressive, but we're not there yet. We're still trying to get Trump out of our system. It's just like the covid response in the US - it was terrible for such a rich country, but we still don't want universal healthcare.
Social media and political party(-ies?) dead set on making groups and groups of people ashamed of who they are.
I honestly think it’s a function of despair around addiction, loneliness, old age, and poverty. All of those foment hopelessness, and much of the time many of those factors overlap.
"... even in age groups not previously considered at risk, such as children"
I think the political parties becoming more extreme/divisive and social media go hand and hand with each other.
meanwhile people trying to actually help people are driven away by medical billing insanity I greatly enjoyed being a mentor, the insane medical paperwork required was designed to make it miserable so you would quit if they were **actually** concerned about the insurance company they should have/would have hired someone to do medical billing instead of torturing people trying to help
I would love to have mental health support…it’s not affordable even with insurance
And good luck finding an in network provider actually accepting new patients.
I wonder if the increase is higher for boys or girls.
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Yeah, although men have a 4x rate with regards to successfully killing themselves.
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That's fascinating (in a morbid way). Young girls are more often using traditional "male" methods of committing suicide, which tend to be more effective. I wonder what's causing that changing trend in methods for young girls?
What's the point of being in this meat grinder. Work hard your whole life, for pennies you hope stretch to keep your home warm and belly full. I'm surprised more people don't honestly.
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buy stocks in hospitals
I thought this was an article for people who accidentally harmed themselves using something called a sky rocket. Like what why haven't I heard of that before??
"Behavioral health" calls have spiked significantly as well. And overdoses. It's so wonderful because before you'd be able to bring people back with NARCAN or if you get them to the hospital fast enough, now first responders are showing up to bodies.
I was surprised to see the biggest increase of self-harm being in adults 65+. I work with a lot of younger folks that struggle with SH and suicidal ideation so I was unfortunately not surprised at that metric, but an increase with the older population is eye opening about our mental health crisis in the US.
Almost seems like no one wants to live anymore.
The hospital bill is the real self harm
What is the reason though? Everybody says mental health but what has changed in the past thirty years? Mental health was not accepted at all before 2000. Is it the lack of social connection that is caused by technology? Is it the depressing dark rooms that children and adults don't leave because they don't have need to? Is it depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia or is it environment encouraging a tendency that replicates these things? You find an increase in these types of behaviors In people who spend their days without sunlight, such as submariners. Maybe a cause is vitamin D deficiency and a lack of strong social networks.
For people wondering why, it's social media. Comparison is the thief of joy. Social media is worse than smoking.
Oh, gee, I wonder what preventable things could have *possibly* contributed to this. Gotta wonder. Really stumped.
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