Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade,
reports The NY Times.
From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7. Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives. The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.
And these tragic numbers may actually be much higher:
While reporting of suicides is not always consistent around the country, the current numbers are, if anything, too low.
“It’s vastly underreported,” said Julie Phillips, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has published research on rising suicide rates. “We know we’re not counting all suicides.”
This is not a purely American phenomenon, and the article’s author makes a mistake when she tries to analyze it in terms of the US history. Just yesterday I posted an article that explains this as an international phenomenon. In all cultures where the consumption of anti-depressants is on the rise, the suicide rates soar. The reason is very simple: suicide is one of the side effects of anti-depressants. Contrary to the lies pharmaceutical companies tell us, suicide as a result of anti-depressant addiction is not rare. These statistics from a number of countries show that suicide as a result of anti-depressants is an incredibly frequent phenomenon.
People who spend their entire lives listening to the lies spread by pharmaceutical companies all day and every day end up believing this ridiculous idea that anti-depressants “help” one get over a difficult moment and find energy to solve his or her problems. Of course, nothing can be further from the truth, since it’s kind of hard to solve one’s problem after one has killed oneself of suffered permanent damage to one’s health as a result of consuming these drugs.
What are the alternatives to anti-depressants? you will ask. Well, thank the pharmaceutical companies for squeezing almost all treatments that actually help and have no side effects out of the country. Every time I write on the subject, a reader goes into literal fits of hysteria at the idea that somebody has dared to speak a word against his or her magic pills that have now become the foundation of many people’s identity. This is precisely what happens among scholars who try to look behind the idea that everybody needs to be medicated to the gills. I can afford to say whatever I like on my blog, but imagine what happens when one’s career is at stake. Scholars who dare to make the tiniest little sound against psychotropic medication suffer greatly as a result.
This is why we are all sitting here, pretending that this scourge is not destroying countless lives. This is why a journalist writes about the soaring suicide rates and pretends that the most obvious cause behind them does not exist. This is why even very intelligent people repeat like in robotic voices, “Anti-depressants save lives”, contrary to every shred of evidence in existence.
I will write about the alternatives to drugs later but I know it will be useless because the TV commercials are too strong and the identity-building potential of these meds is too seductive.
Clarissa's Blog 
I have never had to take any prescription medication for most of my life and even when it was suggested, my mother didn’t want me to anyway and I’ve been fine for the most part! I think the excessive reliance on drugging kids up with pills is the fault of both the doctors and the parents. The parents in Louis Theroux’s “America’s Medicated Kids” documentary for the BBC are pretty stupid and gullible and possibly child abusers too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8k0iw1Kon4
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Thank you for the link, Roberto! This is a film I definitely need to see.
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“Suicide as a result of anti-depressant addiction is not rare.”
Has there been any evidence that pills CAUSE suicide, as such? I assumed they were just a solution that didn’t solve the problem, so whatever would drive someone to anti-depressants would then drive them to suicide.
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Anti-depressant manufacturers have recognized this a long time ago. Suicide is listed as a possible side effect on every bottle and box of pills. But the narrative of this “almost never” happening has been stronger.
Margaret Soltan’s blog keeps linking to studies that are shut down or marginalized because pharmacy companies don’t like them. Studies that show that these meds worsen the depression in most.cases, for instance. The evidence is overwhelming but the power of commercials and paid-for articles is stronger.
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I’ll snoop around her blog until I find the studies you’re talking about. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
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I’m not at home or I’d give links.
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I would also argue that requiring the use of amphetamines to control the behaviour of hyperactive children is equally bad; maybe worse. I know people who have chosen to homeschool their children to prevent them from being forced to take Adderol (I hope I spelled that correctly) in order to be allowed to attend school.
I also am of the impression that every mass shooting in recent years has involved a shooter who had used SRI or SSRI antidepressants.
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When I was in high school, we were given obligatory flu vaccine shots. The problem with this practice was that the same syringe was used on every student. This was 1991-1993, and HIV was on the news a lot. The students didn’t want the shots but our parents couldn’t defend us. I can understand their passivity to an extent. All they knew was totalitarianism, their own parents remembered Stalin. But what prevents American parents for standing up for their kids in this kind of matter when they have absolutely nothing whatsoever to fear in this world is a complete mystery.
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Teachers are pushed to diagnose and then the kids get thrown out of school unless they take drugs. Huge marketing campaigns have gone on to convince parents that in the past people suffered terribly without these drugs. People are encouraged to believe they were born with a chemical imbalance and just did not know it. The narrative of revelation, how after the drug they had their first normal day ever, is taught. It fits the Christian conservative “I have been saved” narrative very well and it kind of sticks.
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This is absolutely brilliant. Briliant, brilliant, brilliant.
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One of the problems with Americans is the narcissism epidemic. They have to feel omnipotent and omniscient, so they don’t pause to consider what they do or do not know. It means they encounter mishaps, like the mishap of the Iraq war, which could have been avoided if proper research had been done, rather than pursuing an idea that reality is created. If some people are driven to create their own reality, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree — but it’s good to have the facts on your side instead of against you.
Americans, very often act as if they don’t believe in facts. They just have to believe something to be true enough and it becomes so. Narcissists are easily duped. Tell them that they should not have to pay for health care because one day they might become a multibillionaire and then they will resent paying for others. These guys will create a wonderful image of themselves as multibillionaires and then you can take whatever you want from them — including the shirt off their back and their health.
Americans need to find a path back to reality somehow, so that they don’t have so many misadventures that depress them.
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“Tell them that they should not have to pay for health care because one day they might become a multibillionaire and then they will resent paying for others.”
– I still resist believing that people are, indeed, guided by this logic because it is so very diseased. I keep looking for other explanations but none are forthcoming.
“These guys will create a wonderful image of themselves as multibillionaires and then you can take whatever you want from them — including the shirt off their back and their health.”
– Thirst is nothing. Image is everything. 🙂 People identify passionately with the invented dramas of the very rich. Folks who barely manage to pay the bills each month go on and on with abandon about how sorry they are for Kate Middleton and this other rich woman, Kardashian, or whatever. I’d suggest that everybody who begins to feel emotionally involved with the affairs of these pop stars should quit reading tabloids and watching television for at least 3 months. Because this is like any other addiction, it clouds one’s judgment and erodes one’s personality. Soon, there is no more personality, just a compilation of soundbites and marketing slogans from commercials.
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And gender relations, by all indications, are extremely poor in the US. They are also quite poor in Australia. Most of my data is from the Internet. Ever since the mid-nineties, men were acting as if women need to be put in their place. Now they lost that battle based on putting down their foot and telling any women they meet who is boss. They are still trying to fight the war through the men’s rights angle, proclaiming that men everywhere are victims. Patriarchy has shifted into identity politics, but the hate is still there.
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This is cultural hegemony. Americans are now a central frame of reference globally. Right now I have a Russian TV show playing in the background as I’m doing my nails. Nobody seems to be able to form a sentence on the show without mentioning Americans.
In the meanwhile, nobody gives a toss about Russians (or Ukrainians) . Not even Russians or Ukrainians.
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Americans shout the loudest. If some troll comments on something I say or do, I trace them back to where they came and see an American flag. If the language and tone is very poor, I put two and two together.
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This is cultural hegemony. Americans are now a central frame of reference globally.(Clarissa)
And you have a bird’s eye view, especially after moving to the United States.
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Moving has nothing to do with it but knowledge of history does. what’s really fun is trying to guess where the hegemony will go next. Americans are trying hard to lose their supremacy.
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Superpowers don’t need to try, it is a natural course of history.
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exactly.
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Some of this is just the result of a couple of conventions gone wrong.
1/ Big belief in importance of respecting beliefs of others, leads to the idea that it is rude to discuss facts.
2/ Same big belief also leads to a lack of practice in disagreement or debate, and the assumption that if there is any of that it must be violent.
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This may be so, but the problem seems much greater. I think that perhaps in all of the developed world, there is a cultural aversion to addressing facts, because the concrete world is necessary complex, ambiguous an unsavory. People prefer to dwell in the land where having the right moral attitude and joining hands seems to suffice to solve any problems. Philosophical idealism is also rampant wherever the Abrahamic religions preside — thus the US and Zimbabwe share some more than superficial resemblances at times. But only at times…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIHHE8LQg7M
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@muster
You really do have an issue with Americans. So, what gives?
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Taking anti-depressants to deal with one’s hardships is like drinking vodka to kill the pain.
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You are absolutely spot on. This is precisely one of the purposes people ingest big amounts of alcohol.
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Not quite, you don’t get the fun, giddy part that alcohol has. 😉
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