Was there an increase in “accidental” deaths? There seemed to be an increase in total deaths, according to meep. People had a lot of spare time to contemplate their demise while assuring the life insurance payoff.
does drug OD count as suicide?
No, and ODs are up double digit percents. This data is extremely (as the kids would say) sus.
That’s what I suspected. I wonder if depressed/suicidal people are just doing more drugs.
yeah, no way this is accurate. last year sucked.
I was gonna say – “unintentional injuries” are way way up, and it’s almost definitely due to huge increase in overdoses.
Accidentally overdoses are way up, but they’ve been counted separately from suicides forever. Why would they currently be counted worse?
True though if “life sucks” was a really good reason to kill yourself then third world countries and most of world history would be littered with nooses.
yeah, but they don’t know any better. for us, it was a quality of life downgrade last year for the average person. introducing a pandemic into the norm is a downgrade, likely worldwide.
I am not an expert at all in looking at cause of death trends, but the diabetes increase seems way more shocking than the increase in “Unintentional Deaths”
Hmmm, covid interacts with both diabetes and dementia, though, so those might be undiagnosed covid cases. (Although i haven’t looked at the actual details, maybe it’s too many to be plausible.)
It’s almost like clinical depression is (mostly) independent of life circumstances 
.
I would argue the reverse: i think clinical depression is worse when you don’t have a goal you need to accomplish. I suspect the hardships of the pandemic mitigated it a bit.
Also, it’s been easier this year to say, “life sucks for everyone, it’s not my fault”.
Also, it’s possible that our beefed-up social safety net helped some people.
Give me a few days, and you’ll get the lovely stats of suicide by method. You really interested?
The thing is, with certain methods, it is difficult to argue that it was accidental. But with drug overdoses, it’s “plausible deniability”.
I will have been looking at the “unintentional injury” rates for 1999-2019, and it’s very annoying the disparate causes lumped together for a rankable cause.
Here are the 4 big categories I collapsed “accidental deaths” into:
- Falls
- Motor vehicle accidents
- Poisonings (which includes drinking rat poison by accident, overdosing on a drug you intended to take but didn’t intend to die by, and totally intended to die via drug overdose)
- Everything else
The trends will surprise you! (or maybe they won’t)
Don’t forget falling off a train moving at 15 mph.
What’s your source? I’ve had trouble finding easy-to-use stats for injury deaths for several years.
So, yes, I really am interested!
Plenty of people in, let’s say China or Mexico, have something important-- a home, a farm, a family, a job, a business-- and lose it all in a bad year from a flood, a famine, a crime, a sickness. And they don’t kill themselves nearly as often as we do, despite the fact that we have tons more security.
Okay, so why are we so miserable here then?
I dunno. Drugs? Loneliness? Pressure? Lack of purpose? Lack of family? Would have to google it I guess.