We often show trended data relating to financials, but one sobering trend that we have come across is something entirely different – death by suicides. We have discussed the fact that many bankers have been committing suicide, but the overall trend has increased dramatically over the past 15 years.
According to recent studies, deaths by suicide have risen dramatically over the past 15 years in the United States, with a sharp uptick coming over the last ten years during the Obama-era as Breitbart puts it.
As Breitbart explains, as the violent crime rate in the United States has fallen steadily for decades, and modern medicine has reduced the fatality rates of disease and accidents, suicide is experiencing a sharp increase over the past 15 years, after a period of consistent decline from 1986 through 1999. Said otherwise, the increased suicide rate is the highest in 30 years. Breitbart also notes that the disturbing trend receives relatively little attention.
While the violent crime rate in the United States has fallen steadily for decades, and modern medicine has reduced the fatality rates of disease and accidents, suicide is experiencing a sharp increase. Suicide is now one of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States with more than 40,000 people a year taking their own lives.
Earlier this year the National Center for Health Statistics published a major study on national trends in suicide. The Center found that in the fifteen-year period from 1999 to 2014, the age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased by a stunning 24 percent, with the pace of increase accelerating significantly after 2006.
This rapid rate of increase followed on a period of nearly consistent decline in suicide rates in the United States for the prior fifteen years, from 1986 through 1999, the study notes.
According to an essay by Frederik Deboer in Foreign Policy, this disturbing trend has received remarkably little attention. So whereas there are daily news stories concerning climate change, he notes—which has yet to claim a single victim—suicide kills tens of thousands a year and yet gets virtually no attention in the news.
As the chart indicates, suicide rates have increased in total, and for both male and females, with the rate of increase greatest from 2006-2014.
Here is the summary from the report
Suicide is increasing against the backdrop of generally declining mortality, and is currently one of the 10 leading causes of death overall and within each age group 10–64. This report highlights increases in suicide mortality from 1999 through 2014 and shows that while the rate increased almost steadily over the period, the average annual percent increase was greater for the second half of this period (2006–2014) than for the first half (1999–2006).
Breitbart goes on to point out that White Americans are more likely to commit suicide than black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, a trend that appears to be correlated to “the declining fortunes of the white working class.”
White Americans are much more likely to commit suicide than black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, Deboer observes, a trend that seems correlated to “the declining fortunes of the white working class.”
This group has suffered economically because of the rise of offshoring and the demise of stable careers for those lacking a college education, he says, resulting in a dramatic rise in problems like unemployment and addiction among the white working class.
Suicide has reached such epic proportions in the United States that sociologist Matt Wray of Temple University has coined the term “suicide belt” to describe the north-south swath of American states — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming — that have particularly high suicide rates.
While some of the causes of increased suicide are endemic to the nation’s economic woes, others can be tied to societal trends, such as the recent craze surrounding transgenderism. Rather than deal with the underlying psychological problems associated with gender dysphoria, the tendency has been to cater to the perceived desires of gender confused individuals, with disastrous results.
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Sadly, we have been covering the erosion of the middle class quite extensively, and we have also touched upon the difficulties for white men in the economy for many years now.
