Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) is only legal in 11 US states.
At best, it requires a diagnosis for a terminal illness with 6 months left to live.
Individuals with an Alzheimer’s or Dementia diagnosis are precluded from being able to make that choice, even if the diagnosis is recent and they still have most of their faculties.
We could be doing so much more to allow people to go out on their own terms and die a good death. It doesn’t have to be traumatic for family members, whoever discovers the body, or those who will inevitably clean up the aftermath.
So the choice given to a dying old man faced with watching his “retirement” and healthcare costs drain whatever meager remains of the estate he might leave behind is faced with this choice:
A) Spend six figures on the various hoops needed to legally kill yourself. B) Spend 40 cents on a really good 9mm cartridge.
Medically assisted suicide doesn’t work in places without public healthcare. You can NEVER be certain that the decision isn’t driven by financial concerns, and like ALL HEALTHCARE IN THE US, its really only available to at least marginally wealthy people in the first place.
For real. Once I retire in a decade or so, I’ll try to live off social security for as log as possible, but once I need to dip into my savings, I’m just tapping my kid’s inheritance. At that point, death is the only financially rational option.
Ever see the show Shameless? Very dark comedy throughout, mostly light hearted content. One episode had me balling. One of the main characters is having memory issues. They were sort of working their bucket list that reunited them with a friend that also had memory problems. The friend mentioned their spouse dying. Main character asks how they remembered. They had it written down on a post-it note on the fridge.
If I had to relive my wife dying every day because I forgot, just put me down.
My wife has a dementia patient for the past year who doesn’t remember being married and having children. She says he proposal to her about once a week. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think?
We put dogs down every day because they have incurable diseases or are suffering.
I had to put my dog down a few years ago because she was so old she could no longer get up or control her bladder or bowels, and I felt guilty for letting it get that far. I still remember the look in her eyes when they gave her the pain killers to knock her out, she looked so relieved.
I don’t understand how I get to make that decision for a dog, but a grown human, in most places, can’t make that call for themselves and go out in a peaceful and controlled manner. If I knew I was going to die painfully in a few months or a year, I’d definitely take an overdose or nitrogen asphyxiation over the disease. When dogs have a better way out than people, something is seriously wrong.
Too many people think the point of society is so you have others to take advantage of.
There unfortunately isn’t going to be a perfect answer here. I think most people would agree that a 17 year old in perfect health but depressed shouldn’t be able to die and I think most people would agree that 95 year old with a week to live in serious pain should be able to.
Where the line is, who gets to decide, and what criteria they use is always going to be something debatable. I generally think it should be decided by medical review boards and the most important criteria should be consent.
I had someone close to me with a terminal illness use a gun to end his suffering. He had a bottle of Oxy on his nightstand and a gun inside his nightstand and the only reason I can think that he decided to go the gun route was so he was sure that it’d be done. It sucks that he didn’t have any other options available that could have provided a more caring and humane way to exit. Instead now his wife has to live with having found him like that in bed, and my daughter has to live with the fact that she never got to say ‘goodbye’.
I knew someone who made use of a death with dignity law and one of the doctors that he had to see to get the OK legally had to entourage him to take his own life. Something along the lines of “I have to tell you that, instead of a peaceful drug-assisted death, you have the option to forgo eating and drinking until you die.”
“There’s too much identity tied up in one’s work, so that is lost [after retirement]. And then there’s the cultural script of what maleness means in in our culture, so men just won’t admit or won’t receive care for depression because of that sense that it’s somehow not what a man does.”
What use is a cog that can’t cog anymore? Caring for elders is not built into our value system and not protected by our economic system.
Hell, it may be the only way to retire in a few more years.
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Maybe it isn’t about caring for them maybe it’s about teaching them to live with what they have. The skills for being retired are different than the skills of working. The skills of taking care of grandchildren are different than children.
We just sorta assume people know what to do when they get a certain age and maybe that isn’t a valid assumption. I am just thinking of an uncle I had whose health just crashed right after he stopped working. He didn’t add physical or mental work to make up for not working anymore. As opposed to some elderly I know who have loaded up the hobbies.
What use is a cog that can’t cog anymore? Caring for elders is not built into our value system and not protected by our economic system.
Also, what good is “care for depression” when the causes of depression aren’t a “chemical imbalance” but having to live in a partriarchal capitalist society that only values men for what they can provide?
What if constantly calling a system that fails men “the patriarchy” was part of the problem?
What if calling a system that blames all men for a system that benefits a tiny elite was a large reason why so many men are totally dead disenfranchised with the concept? If there was even a one percent chance that was true - would you stop it doing it?
What would you suggest instead? The “kyriarchy”? The “military-industrial-congressional complex”? How about getting fisted by the invisible hand of the market?
Why would I have to choose a name that specifically targets one demographic?
When are the Internet revolutionaries going to realise that choosing solutions that deliberately create division will… Wait for it… Create division.
How are you going to solve problems when you’re literally motivating people to resist you?
I think others have mentioned this, but I’m disturbed that the article seems more concerned about guns than about the way our society and culture fails older men.
Sure it gets a mention but omg guns.
Get rid of all guns and gun suicides will plummet! It’s just obvious! Can’t you see that?! The problem is GUNS GUNS GUNS. After all, this is an anti gun article, right?! Wait… Why does the article mention suicide?
The idea of stopping suicide by removing the means is absolutely sick when you think about it.
Removing the means of suicide is the crudest, least helpful method of suicide prevention.
It’s also extremely cruel. Like if someone really wants to kill themselves due to ongoing unsolvable pain, they should absolutely have that right. Suicide is a human right.
Sure, of course we should do our best to provide options to solve their pain…even if they feel it is unsolvable, it might not be. It is important we do everything to show them that it might actually be solvable. I’m not denying we need more of those supports for people considering suicide. But like, if they have tried absolutely everything and are in a constant state of pain then only a truly evil person would force them to continue to suffer. It’s fundamentally immoral.
Children are able to understand why putting a suffering dog down in the right course of action, but somehow a majority of adults seem unable to draw the same conclusion around people with incurable terminal illnesses that make people suffer immensely (for example ALS).
Get rid of all guns and gun suicides will plummet!
Shouldn’t you guys be somewhere crying out mental health in the replies to yet another mass shooting article?
Sure you can kill yourself other ways, and society isn’t great to older men, or men, or women, or infants, or whatever…but guns deliver instant death that is just barely on this side of the line of premeditated.
The rise in suicide rates also coincides with lax gun laws if you have read anything about the subject.
Think about the last time you had a long, lonely night, it was miserable, right? What if you had an instant way of ending it all right that moment at the height of your torment, and that method was within arm’s reach?
Guns can easily turn a bad night into a person’s last night. Expand outreach for mental health and work on improving society in other ways, sure, but continuing to provide ubiquitous, instant means to kill yourself and others does zero to solve any of society’s ills.
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Fr in amarica wel fix everything but the thing creating the problem. Baning guns ain’t gonna make people less depressed, less isolated, less valiant and the only people that feel safer are people who didn’t have issues to begin with.
So?
We value capital here, not human life.
As an American, shouldn’t our glorious free capitalist market celebrate these depleted capital batteries taking themselves out of the equation and lowering the tax burden on our beloved job creators requiring social supports once they can no longer make them money as fast food employees or store greeters?
What kind of Americans would put value on human life that can no longer generate private shareholder value? Smh, ya’ll need to find supply side Jesus.
To be fair though, the common method is as American as
apple pie baseballvast homeless tent cities. 🇺🇸🎶 Oh say can you seeee…today’s mass shooting on teevee… 🎶🇺🇸TRUE DAT! no, my capslock isnt on.
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No no no, we must keep them alive on life support for as long as their bank balance remains. Them after that we shall keep going until their entire family line is in debt to us. Brilliant!
Well see, capitalism isn’t about productivity. It’s about maximizing capital. More consumers means more spending, and more money moving to people maximizing capital. So… Capitalism hates the death of consumers and loves procreation even more.
But you’re only a consumer if you have money to spend. If you’re broke, you’re out of the market.
To be fair, each additional person is a net gain for society’s wealth on average.
From earnings and potential earnings, people are. The elderly are the worst consumers by far, any piece of shit proud sociopathic capitalist will tell you that.
Worst? Well, it depends. 🙂 When the elderly are so fucking far gone, their minds are gone, and they require to be put into a home…if they happen to have built up wealth…it is extracted from them pretty quickly. They’re a consumer on steroids, providing jobs & income to others. A decent nursing home where I live will run $70K annually, and that doesn’t cover medications. Divide that by 365, their family is shelling out, at bare minimum, $191 every single day for them to “live”. That’s a lot of cash!
And thats a lot of terrible!
Leftists can’t do math, or they wouldn’t be leftists.
True dat.
You really don’t need to talk that way.
I genuinely wish I didn’t.
But Alas, this cruel nation makes respect impossible for me, and in lieu of any power, my only solace is making mockery of our unrepentant oppressors and this exploitation camp of a “society.”
This is a really sad state of affairs for older guys.
Imagine a guy who gets to 55+ and takes a look at his life and realize he’s not where he wants to be and it feels like there’s no chance to restart. Maybe he just didn’t get into the housing market in time or start his 401k. Maybe some health issues or divorces blew out his savings.
These are the guys who were out of college right before the world was flipped upside down by technology, so I’m sure a lot of them never thought they had to catch up to keep their career running.
It would be really hard to not see it as a personal total failure, and to be frank their family and peers might see it that way too if they know. It probably feels like standing at the base of Everest when he should have the summit in sight.
His peers are either feeling depressed like him or they are jetting around on holidays most of the time.
Guys are taught most of their life to stuff the emotional things, so the future feels hopeless because he’s in a bubble and doesn’t understand how common this feeling is.
I hope we can find more ways to let guys like this, and all people, know that this feeling is temporary and there is a lot of hope waiting at the next turn.
Maybe he needs a bit of a boost from some antidepressants and someone to talk with who can help him let it all out. Or maybe he just needs a society that sees him as someone with something left to give, who still has jobs to be done, and that’s enough.
Everyone saying it’s ridiculous to prevent people from killing themselves needs to keep in mine that these rules are generally in placw to prevent vulnerable people, including and especially the elderly, from being convinced to kill themselves so junior can inherit their house. People are bastards and absolutely will take advantage of more lax euthanasia laws to rid themselves of “troublesome” or “useless” people.
Yeah… this isn’t “it’s my time, I’m ready”, this seems more “I live in a system that has made my every waking day a depressing and fear filled nightmare, convinced of my own worthlessness, with death as my only release”.
But I want my kid to inherit my house. I’ll be damned if I piss it away on a bunch of entities compelling me to stay alive so they can drain everything I’ve accumulated. Fuck them. End me while there’s still something left.
Evolution has never stopped. Humans are simply creating new selection pressures. Humans are cruel to each other so that some will kill themselves. This will remain the case until cooperation becomes a dominant survival strategy.
Damn dude. I think this too and it’s crazy to see someone else explain this.
Well, cooperation is a dominant survival strategy. But that does not mean it’s fair or that everyone will be an even slightly equally beneficial party.
Yes but evolution is natural, this rat race that pushes people to suicide it’s entirely fabricated.
Idk… sounds too much like social Darwinism
Good job in taking a serious issue and putting an unnecessary partisan spin on it, CNN. The issue of guns needs to be sidelined when talking about issues as serious as suicide.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-rate-by-country
I don’t really see the problem with elderly people who decide they want to check out. If we allowed medically assisted death, they could die with dignity.
Most of it is caused by depression, not terminal illness.
Still need the option to check out on your own terms.
what about improving their material condition so they can enjoy being old like other people in civilized countries???
These are not mutually exclusive.
That would be great. You realize TWO things are possible, right?
Doesn’t change my opinion
I imagine in many cases depression caused by their failing bodies and inability to lead a happy life due to it. That and their partner probably recently dying.
If Republicans actually gave a shit about mental health maybe we wouldn’t have so many gun suicides.
Or suicides generally.
Yeah but then they’d have even more mental gymnastics to do with bootstraps and all that
Suicide isnt reported in many places, because it is a social and religious taboo. For example the greek orthodox church still refuses to bury people who killed themselves(and 99% of greeks used to be christian orthodox, though atheism is becoming more popular nowadays).
Do they still refuse to bury unbaptized kids as well?
Only if they were allowed to bugger them first.
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Suicide is a problem around the world, guns or not. Focus on the issue, not click-bait titles.
Yet it’s a huge issue because of guns in the US.
No it is not, Japan has a higher rate than we do and they basically don’t have firearms at all in their country.
No they don’t.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
The US is 31, Japan is 49.
55% of suicides use guns:
Uhh Japan’s rate is 16.5 vs the USAs 14… they most definitely have a higher rate of suicide. I don’t even know how you think we have a lower rate than they do.
The Wikipedia page has 2 tables the one that says ‘latest’ from the WHO has the US higher and the one that includes multiple sources and older data has Japan higher
14.5 in the US v 12.2 in Japan. So no.
It has been repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that means reduction (which the pro-gun community won’t allow) and survivability (which guns don’t have) play an extremely important role in suicide prevention.
Guns are absolutely part of the issue. Unfortunately, the pro-gun community prioritises sweeping gun deaths under the rug to maintain their profits and possessions over actually protecting anyone.
You like to talk a lot about studies and data without actually providing studies or data.
Just reading through your profile is just a mess of “it has been proven”, “debunked”, “repeatedly shown”, etc., etc., or just the simple “no, your wrong”.
Quite honestly, it’s weird. While we all tend to use simple phrases during a discussion, I also like to at least provide a link or two or have a study within reach to back up my assumptions.
Your motivation is simply to piss people off, it seems.
It’s not my responsibility to spoon feed you information and you shouldn’t be trusting posts on social media just because they do.
There’s no better way to feed people dogshit than studies and graphs stripped of context.
It’s not about spoon feeding me information. It’s about validating your own claims.
Also, links on social media are completely visible and transparent. You should know exactly what they link to and were information is hosted. A good study will generally have good sample sizes and plenty of peer reviews.
I have validated my own claims, to my own standard, under my own volition. That’s why I hold this opinion in the first place.
You either haven’t, or have chosen to dismiss the evidence because it’s inconvenient to the opinions you want to hold.
Also, links on social media are completely visible and transparent. You should know exactly what they link to and were information is hosted. A good study will generally have good sample sizes and plenty of peer reviews.
It’s not stupid to click the link, its stupid to let someone on the internet assure you they’ve provided all the context you need.
The British medical journal Lancet published a study back in 1998. It’s had hundreds of peer reviews. Does that mean that if somebody links it on social media, you’ll just accept it?
Because that paper was the origin of “vaccines cause autism”. It has been linked millions of times by a group of people who are spreading misinformation that kills people.
Want me to send you a link next time I see one? You can strut into their midst with links to the hundreds of studies that disprove it.
I’m sure it won’t be a waste of your time and I’m sure every counter argument will be made in only the best of faith.
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Many do not, the fuck is wrong with you. The majority of gun deaths are suicides and it’s a single person taking their life.
America has “many” mass shootings because the baseline for other countries is “once a decade”, not because the number has many digits.
You’re either fully aware of this and being manipulative or you reacted emotionally without thinking – not a good trait for a gun owner, but one shared by all the ones who committed suicide or killed their partners.
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did the americans find out about lemmy? wtf is this comment section??
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Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. There’s alot of stuff I don’t agree with op on but I believe he is entitled to an opinion and is entitled to share that opinion and so are you
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Guns are life. My rule to live by is “Love, Hate, Guns, and Ammo.”
None think about having to clean up all their blood and brain matter left over. Suicide is so selfish.
Ironically your comment is incredibly selfish (you need to walk in their shoes) and based on nothing but your imagination. Some may take precautions to minimize cleanup.
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thank you. its nice to hear or in this case read someone put it out so sanely and clearly. I do not get why other people feel they should tell someone else that they have to continue to exist because they know better than them.
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Calling people who suffer from suicidal ideation or committed suicide selfish is exactly like calling kids with down syndrome idiots.
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Yikes.
It’s also selfish to force people to suffer due to our personal moral scruples. Allow assisted suicide.
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Not so easily as you say.
Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia are curable, are they?
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Alzheimer’s, if caught early, can be cured.
-YoBuckStopsHere
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"Current Alzheimer’s treatments temporarily improve symptoms of memory loss and problems with thinking and reasoning.
These Alzheimer’s treatments boost the performance of chemicals in the brain that carry information from one brain cell to another. They include cholinesterase inhibitors and the medicine memantine (Namenda). However, these treatments don’t stop the underlying decline and death of brain cells. As more cells die, Alzheimer’s disease continues to progress."
-literally your own source
I try not judge these folks too harshly, they must be in incredible pain.
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And that’s the whole problem. Medical help is so expensive you need medical help after medical help.
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No, they’re not in pain? Really?
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Someone who doesn’t want help is not going to seek help. Your “solution” is as insane as telling a schizophrenic person to just stop listening to voices. Your understanding of mental illness is both offensive to those of us who suffer from it and just simply ignorant. Until you get a degree in psychology, maybe you shouldn’t be lecturing other people about what they should do about their mental illnesses.
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Yes, they do want help. They always want help.
Is this in your expert psychological opinion?
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Wall Street is selfish. Taking more profit than you need is selfish.
These people were desperate. Many likely due to rampant American capitalistic selfishness forcing them to subsist on catfood so business crooks can have 2 vacation homes and 5 expensive cars instead of everyone benefitting from market prosperity.
Selfishness is America’s brand, but being driven to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger isn’t selfishness, it is largely a consequence of other’s selfishness. Our suicide rates are extreme in the supposedly “developed” world because selfish people demand everything and we let them do it at societal expense.
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