More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression

[Elspeth]

More Americans Committing Suicide than During the Great Depression

...Indeed, more Americans are killing themselves today than during the Great Depression. Specifically, there were were 123 million Americans in 1930. The maximum suicide rate during the depths of the Great Depression was 22 out of 100,000 Americans. That means that up to 27,060 Americans killed themselves each year.

In contrast, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that 38,364 Americans committed suicide in 2010. In other words, 2010 suicides were approximately 142% of suicides during the depths of the Great Depression. (The suicide rate is lower today than during the Great Depression, but – given that there are more Americans – there are more suicides each year.)

The head of my local county’s mental health services confirmed to me today that there are now more suicides now than during the Great Depression.

The Root Causes: Unemployment and Foreclosure

Why do more people kill themselves during severe downturns? It’s not just a downturn in the business cycle in some general sense. It’s more specific than that.

Unemployment and foreclosure are the largest triggers in increased suicide risk....

[Rockntractor]

[DumbAss Tanker]

In the Depression, you could hit the road and start over with a low-level job somewhere else that didn't pay great, but then neither did most of the skilled jobs, and even most of the skilled jobs could be learned over time by OJT without having to have any magic piece of paper. Now, there is pervasive identity control, lifetime records like SS and credit reports that follow you everywhere, a lot more technical work that pays far better than blue-collar jobs, and a greatly-increased demand for special credentials and academic tickets. You can't move on and re-invent yourself the way you could back then, and so there is much less of a way out for the busted now than there was back in the day.

[noonwitch]

It doesn't help when the anti-depressant medication given to people who are suicidal advertises on tv that one of the possible side effects is "thoughts of suicide".

[Madisonian]

In the Depression, you could hit the road and start over with a low-level job somewhere else that didn't pay great, but then neither did most of the skilled jobs, and even most of the skilled jobs could be learned over time by OJT without having to have any magic piece of paper. Now, there is pervasive identity control, lifetime records like SS and credit reports that follow you everywhere, a lot more technical work that pays far better than blue-collar jobs, and a greatly-increased demand for special credentials and academic tickets. You can't move on and re-invent yourself the way you could back then, and so there is much less of a way out for the busted now than there was back in the day.

It's not only the college piece of paper, but the governmental one as well.
In the past and up until about the 80's, you could fix things like cars, appliances, home repairs and whatever else without having to be certified or licensed by some agency of state, local or federal government.
And you can't lay all the blame for this strictly at the feet of the government. Most of these laws and regulations were pushed by lobbyists to protect not the consumers, but the service providers from competition under the disguise of "consumer protection".