Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suicide. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Have you considered suicide? If so, you were probably drunk, possibly armed

Unfortunately the statistics don’t lie and they tell us that the person is likely to be drinking and may use a firearm to take his or her life.  Guns and booze obviously don’t mix so why is the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) lobbying so hard for its members to be allowed to carry guns into bars across the country?  Just one more of those ideas that common sense tells you is stupid but Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, apparently suffers that distinguishing characteristic.


55% by firearms

From 2003 to 2009, around 20 percent of U.S. citizens committing suicide had blood levels that satisfied the standard definition of intoxication, according to family Practice News.  Shocking?  Not really when you consider 72 percent of those age 35-54 drink; same for 18-34; 59 percent for 55+, and the fact that there are 270 million guns in the hands of U.S. civilians.  That’s 88.8 firearms per 100 people, close to one per person.

Suicide and alcohol
The U.S. is number 41 in the world in the number of suicides with 11.8 per year per 100,000 population.  In a 2011 study of suicides by city, Business Insider listed the top 15 with Las Vegas, NV as number one.  Interestingly, Arizona with the loosest gun laws in the country was the only state to have three cities listed: Phoenix, Tucson and Mesa.  According to the American foundation for suicide Prevention, someone commits suicide in the U.S. every 14.2 minutes.

Interesting video on suicide prevention:

Mitchell Zoler of Family Practice breaks it down by gender with 24 percent among men and 17 percent for women.  But the possibility increases among young adults where suicide is more impulsive.  As Zoler puts it, Alcohol serves as the “disinhibitor.”  And alcohol is also the number one instigator for abuse because it is so readily available.  Drinking reduces inhibition and increases aggression which is present in both domestic abuse and suicide.

Here are some more startling statistics from the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention and Suicide Awareness Voices of Education:

  • Recent data puts yearly medical costs for suicide at nearly $100 million (2005).

  • Men are nearly 4 times more likely to die by suicide than women. Women attempt suicide 3 times as often as men.

  • Suicide rates are highest for people between the ages of 40 and 59.

  • There are twice as many deaths due to suicide than HIV/AIDS.

  • Suicide rates in the United States are highest in the spring.

  • Over half of all suicides are completed with a firearm.

  • Suicide rates among the elderly are highest for those who are divorced or widowed.

  • The strongest risk factor for suicide is depression.

  • 80% of people that seek treatment for depression are treated successfully.

  • There are an estimated 8 to 25 attempted suicides to 1 completion.

  • 1 in 65,000 children ages 10 to 14 commit suicide each year.

  • Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S.

  • An average of one person dies by suicide every 16.2 minutes.

These are raw, startling facts re. how suicides occur in the U.S. and some of the avenues taken to achieve the act.  What is really alarming is the fact that over half of suicides are accomplished using a firearm.  What is equally alarming is how many guns are available in this country (270,000,000) that gives the person the means to do harm to themselves.  At some point the gun public must realize just how much the 2nd Amendment infringes on the right to live of non-owners.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Facebook, Google help potential suicides…will they sell your data?

It is commendable that Facebook and Google have set up procedures to identify people who are contemplating suicide, passing them along to help lines that are geared up to help these folks.  Facebook has designed a system that promotes the flagging of “suicidal or otherwise violent messages.”  If there is a post about someone doing harm to themselves, friends can click on a “report suicidal content link.”

Google added something to its U.S. search engine in 2010 showing a red telephone plus the telephone number for a suicide help line to call.  They have a similar program for poison-control providing a hotline.  The latter was prompted by an actual incident of a mother unable to find the right number after her child had consumed something poisonous. 

These are good things being done by two high-profile companies in the business of providing and sharing information between their customers.  The question is whether we can trust either with this most personal of private information, that, if used against us, could be disastrous.  As an example, both companies are known to collect marketing information from online use of their sites, and what if Google or Facebook decided to sell suicide data to a life insurance company?



After all, Mark Zuckerberg, the bad-boy founder of Facebook, has been known in the past to push the limit on how he uses your personal data.  As late as November of 2011 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lodged a complaint against Facebook for assuring customers their data was secure from ad networks or FB apps, while at the same time this information was merrily streaming on its way to both. 

It’s as if Zuckerberg, genius that he may be, comes completely dumb when it gets down to your privacy.  Or is it that he just doesn’t care because he thinks your private information belongs to him?  I spent 35 years in the junk mail industry selling your personal data, but for the last seven years I have been fighting for your rights in this matter.  The problem is the average person is completely apathetic about this issue, allowing the Facebooks and Googles to do their thing.

Google has mellowed over the years since they were accused of holding search data for too long a period of time.  However, in March of 2011, Google settled a complaint with the FTC that its Google Buzz social network violated user privacy.  With a fanfare introduction, Google failed to tell users their personal information might be shared.  These oversights are frequent in businesses who apparently don’t understand the full value of privacy.  Unlike junk mailers, who understand but either don’t care or favor profits over customer data security.

Let me leave you with yet one more example of how Facebook and Google might share this data with advertisers.  Pharmaceutical companies thrive on any means to hawk new and old drugs to the public and have little regard for consumer privacy.  Anti-depressant drug-makers could use a list like this to sell their wares, although some experts in the past say anti-depressants actually cause suicides. 

You may think this is all far-fetched but we are currently in an information-driven society and in my 35 years selling this personal data it was obvious just what a gold mine it is.  And because everything anyone needs to know about you is out there with easy access, it just may be too late to even think about your privacy anymore.

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