rising suicide/depression rate

[ScientificDJ]

i don't really know for sure but i get the impression that the suicide and depression rates are increasing over the years, especially among yound people. i know quite a few people (myself included) who have been depressed or considered suicide, and i know of one that has killed himself (not personally though). so my question is: what is changing about society that is bringing about this increased suicide/depression rate?

i can think of a few possible things:

increased pressure on young people socially

media like movies and games have warped our perspectives on life and death so we treat death more lightly

decreased communication between adults and young people means they make more ill advised decisions that an older, wiser person could have advised them better of (also this decreased communication could mean they get depressed more because they tend to not talk about things as much with adults)

the media i mentioned before and a busier lifestyle mean we tend to be more small minded and shortsighted, not thinking things through and not looking at the big picture, not realising things will most likely improve (and before you start bitching to me about "video games and movies don't do shit to us, leave them alone", from a mix of personal experience and looking at the issue i beg to differ)

 

[riskroWe]

Depression will always increase as average intelligence and awareness increases.

 

[Hazy]

Depression will always increase as average intelligence and awareness increases.

True. Very true. I must say that as I grew up, and saw the world for what it really was, I tended to look down upon it. Which would explain my generally pessimistic nature. But, eh, We're all naive and young once.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

Depression will always increase as average intelligence and awareness increases.

wait..
Average Intelligence is increasing?
so that means that there must be A LOT of smart people to offset the idiots... especially all the idiots in this country. (Not everyone in this country is an idiot.)

 

[ACM_Shadow]

1) the amount of propaganda we are exposed to in this world eg: cloths/food/relationships/morals
2) the quality of TV shows and what is shown at peak timeslots.
3) what is on the news nowadays. "Whistleblower tells cafe owners endanger customers by not washing hands...." When there has to be something more important out there.
4)lack of parenting nowadays, now its more TVs teach kids
5) the "importance and stress created of education and jobs" (soon you will need a uni degree to work at fast food stores)
6)Ignorance!!!
and yes games/movies probably have had a SLIGHT impact on this as well, but nowhere near as much as everyone says they do.

As you can tell i have a strong view on this, one of my mates almost committed suicide a while back, hes gettin better now thankfully.

 

[wewontdie11]

I guess most people come to the correct realisation that the world is not a nice place. Whether it be on an international scale or a local scale, just on sheer balance of numbers you will encounter 10x more things that will get you down than things that brighten your day, through the news, conversation and everyday life. Or so it seems to me but that just may be my jaded view of the world.

 

[riskroWe]

Naw 'depressed' occupies that turbulent spot between 'naive' and 'wise'.

 

[scnj]

A permanent solution to a temporary problem. It's something that affected me very personally in the past, and no matter how bad things get, I'd never do it because I wouldn't want to put my family and friends through what happened to me.

 

[Tyrant T100]

Well I've had severe depression many times and attempted suicide twice. (I've got an ASD which makes it harder to cope with problems). I think mainly it's because we as young people look at everyone else and go "Everyone else has a boyfriend/girlfriend why am I the only one left out." and with society's crumbling and issues like bullying increasing it gets harder and ahrder to deal with.

 

[Affero-Dolor]

I disagree with your third point OP, in fact this generation is more connected emotionally with the one above than any generation before us. Most of us can talk to our parents nowadays and corporal punishment is lessening and lessening. I think suicide rates are increasing, but it's not the teenage demographic that is, it tends to be single males between 20-30 as long as I have my facts right. that's because of increased career pressure and lack of emotional stability coupled with wanting a family but being less and less likely to have one.

 

[Nargleblarg]

I do see people every day who look or act like they are going to kill themselves. I guess since some believe the world will end soon plus the insane media (american media) and increase in addictions and crimes it would make sense for the depression rate to go up.

I personally would never do it because it would be a waste of talent....plus I'm not a idiot.

 

[vampirekid.13]

its the earths natural way of having population control...otherwise the planet would be totally overpopulated.

 

[Ironman2020]

It takes courage to go the coward's way out. It takes even more to try to survive to the next day.

 

[bluepilot]

In the past, people did not commit suicide so much because they had to work hard. Farmers tilling field by hand, housewives doing laundry (do you have any idea how hard it is to get white linens washed, pressed and starched the old fashioned way?)

Advancements in technology have made our lives much easier. Very few of us have to do any physically hard labour. On the other hand, this style of life makes many things become mudane.

I am sure that a lot of young boys wanted to be train drivers. When trains were these giant monsters of steel that required power, strenght, precision..now days you just press a button.

Technology has made our lives mundane and predictable. It has greatly reduced the need for skilled labour meaning that a lot of jobs available are unskilled. Well, unless you count `people skills` or `communication skills`.

I mean, what would you rather have, a job bashing out bits of metal into intricate shapes over a hot furnace, or a desk job selling paper.

So, I think that depression and suicide rises because people are bored. I think that the mind and body needs to be kept constantly busy and active to keep a person happy. How many jobs available today stimulate the mind?

Plus, all they teach in schools is how to pass exams. What can you expect to learn by regurgitating a syllabus? How mind stimulating is that!

 

[BonsaiK]

i don't really know for sure but i get the impression that the suicide and depression rates are increasing over the years, especially among yound people. i know quite a few people (myself included) who have been depressed or considered suicide, and i know of one that has killed himself (not personally though). so my question is: what is changing about society that is bringing about this increased suicide/depression rate?

i can think of a few possible things:

increased pressure on young people socially

media like movies and games have warped our perspectives on life and death so we treat death more lightly

decreased communication between adults and young people means they make more ill advised decisions that an older, wiser person could have advised them better of (also this decreased communication could mean they get depressed more because they tend to not talk about things as much with adults)

the media i mentioned before and a busier lifestyle mean we tend to be more small minded and shortsighted, not thinking things through and not looking at the big picture, not realising things will most likely improve (and before you start bitching to me about "video games and movies don't do shit to us, leave them alone", from a mix of personal experience and looking at the issue i beg to differ)

Okay, firstly, you're assuming that depression and suicide rates are increasing. In fact if you look at statistics broadly in most western countries, they've always fluctuated somewhat but have been consistently low since the 1980s.

It's also presumptuous to think that the media makes us treat death more lightly because it gets televised a lot, this links with "desensitisation" theory which has its flaws. And even if someone is desensitized to violence, that might explain killing others, but why would that make them want to take their own life more?

In western society there's always been a lot of pressure on young people socially. That has never changed much, really. Talk to your parents about some the pressures they had while growing up, if anything you should find that they had even more to think about than you do, as social norms were stricter back then.

You're also assuming that adults talk to kids less now than they used to. Is this really true? I would think that there is an increasing awareness of what makes "good parenting" these days, there's certainly a lot more books about it in the bookstore.

Furthermore, there's the issue of "busy lifestyles". Are today's parents really more busy than previous generations? There's certainly more "leisure toys" and a lot more automated devices to ease workloads for chores and such, than what there used to be.

I guess my point is - things aren't always what they seem. Every generation always thinks that things are "turning for the worse" but this is generally an illusion. It's actually a pretty good time to be a global citizen, statistically. Don't take perceptions about increasing suicide rates and depression rates for granted. What you're really seeing is increasing willingness for people to talk about the problems, and an increasing awareness of the issues. That' doesn't mean that more people are depressed or are killing themselves, it just means people are talking about it more.

Sources:

http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0895435695000102
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

 

[BonsaiK]

its the earths natural way of having population control...otherwise the planet would be totally overpopulated.

Not correct. Suicides account for less than 2% of deaths worldwide. It's not a significant number to affect population growth. The only factor that truly affects population is birthrate. Not suicide, not war, not automobile accidents, disease, natural disaster or anything else. In any event the world is at no risk of being overpopulated as the world population is levelling out. Current UN predictions see the world population flatlining at 9 billion people - a number the planet can easily support.

 

[jimduckie]

my escapist friends , im always sad , killing yourself is ignorant , the bastards must never win , i stick around just to fuck them up ...

 

[AvsJoe]

I don't have a theory on the apparent rise of suicide and depression, but here's a Cracked article that has touched on it (wow, I've really been talking a lot about Cracked lately): http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

Depression will always increase as average intelligence and awareness increases.

Average Intelligence is increasing?
so that means that there must be A LOT of smart people to offset the idiots... especially all the idiots in this country. (Not everyone in this country is an idiot.)

There are a lot of intelligent people, almost as many as the intellectually inferior, but it's the idiots out there who get more noticed. Think about it, who's more interesting: the genius or the dumbass?

 

[Lord Of Cyberia]

I would correlate a rising suicide rate with a rising population. More people means more people who see suicide as their only option.

 

[vortex30]

More people are depressed these days because we are living in such an unnatural way. The human brain wasn't designed to sit still in front of a computer 3+ hours a day, work a monotonous job for 8+ hours a day, etc. We are supposed to be OUTSIDE in nature, doing actual physical work such as hunting and farming, and THIS is why I think more people are depressed. It is ALL about physical activity and getting your brain's endorphins and monoamines working. Exercise is the way to counter our modern and extremely unnatural lifestyles, as well as being outside in the sun. A good way to 'trick' the mind into thinking it is in its natural state when really its so far removed from it.

We are animals, but we don't do hardly anything that animals do, and thus we have this inner, subconscious confusion I am sure of 'what the hell is going on here?' Although we are 'free' to do and go wherever we want, we are living in a state similar to what prisoners are probably exposed to, though it is by conscious choice, it is NOT what our minds are engineered for.